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How to monitor carb intake.

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indio02

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
I've decided to spend a month monitoring my daily carb intake and wonder how people do it.

I don't really eat 'processed' food ie mostly foods that don't come with a nutrition label on.
The most carby thing I currently eat is bread. I get it from a local baker and it's made with a starter, flour, salt & water. How would I know the amount of carbs in a weighed slice for instance.
Thanks
 
I find the internet is a wonderful thing.
Like you, I cook mostly from scratch so need to find the carb content of the raw ingredients.
For example, I google "carbs in ...".
It is all an approximation - the carbs in yoghurt can vary by cow herd, the carbs in apples can vary by ripeness, the carbs in cake can vary by how many raisins are in each slice, ...
When blood glucose meters are only accurate to 15% and there are said to be at least 42 things that affect blood sugars (carbs are only one), I am happy to accept the approximation.
So, for how many carbs in your bakers loaf, I would just Google "carbs in bread". If there are multiple results, I would take the average.

The other thing to consider is how to handle fibre and fiber. We do not digest it so it is usually not included when we carb count. However, in USA fiber is included in the carb values. Elsewhere, fibre (note the spelling) is excluded from the carb value. Therefore, it is important to check the source of the internet data I was caught out with dates - they contain a oot of fibre (and carbs) but my source was American and I forgot to subtract the fiber value
 
1 slice of white bread is about 12g of carbs.
1 slice of wheat toasted bread is about 13g of carbs.
1 slice of rye bread is about 15g of carbs.
1 bagel is about 48g of carbs (for a 98gram bagel)
1 slice of banana bread is about 33g of carbs (for a 60 gram slice)
1 large croissant is about 31g of carbs (large being about 67g)
1 English muffin is about 26g of carbs for 1 muffin 57grams in weight.
1 slice of French bread toasted is about 54g (1 slice being 88 grams in weight)
1 slice of Garlic bread is about 25g of carbs (1 slice being 59grams in weight)
1 roll is about 15g (for a 28 gram roll)

Hope that helps. It certainly helped looking it up, I used to eat a lot of bread before I found out about my blood sugar issues. I love croissant's and hope to have them again someday, but in much less quantities. Be careful with bread, and fruit juices and jams. These can be deadly breakfast foods.
 
@Admiral Benbow the concept of a slice of bread when it comes unsliced is .... variable.
I find it better to weigh the slice and use the percentage of carbs. This is typically close to 50%.
As a bread maker, I always use this approach.
 
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Admiral Benbow said:
1 slice of white bread is about 12g of carbs.
Click to expand...
Your bread slices must be much smaller than mine, the white bread my children like (standard ASDA soft white medium sliced loaf) reckons 18g of Carbs per slice, the seedy goodness I prefer Hovis super-seeded (?) is 19.7g/slice.

Do not all supermarkets now have to display nutritional data online? This makes life quite easy when searching for a specific product and/or something comparable to use the data from, e.g.

https://groceries.asda.com/product/...a-soft-white-medium-sliced-bread/910002989320
or a similar offering from Sainsbury's:
 
SimonP said:
Your bread slices must be much smaller than mine, the white bread my children like (standard ASDA soft white medium sliced loaf) reckons 18g of Carbs per slice, the seedy goodness I prefer Hovis super-seeded (?) is 19.7g/slice.

Do not all supermarkets now have to display nutritional data online? This makes life quite easy when searching for a specific product and/or something comparable to use the data from, e.g.

https://groceries.asda.com/product/...a-soft-white-medium-sliced-bread/910002989320
or a similar offering from Sainsbury's:
Click to expand...
My numbers were just from a simple google search.
 
SimonP said:
Do not all supermarkets now have to display nutritional data online?
Click to expand...
The OP says they get their bread from a local bakery. If they are a small company, I do not believe they need to display the nutritional content of their baked goods.
The carbs in a slice will depend up on the thickness of the slice ... and how far through the loaf you are if it is a cob rather than a farmhouse.
Hence the advice to weigh it.
 
Admiral Benbow said:
My numbers were just from a simple google search.
Click to expand...
Much as I appreciate you are trying to help, your "simple google search" is proliferating incorrect information and is not helpful particularly in this situation where we are talking about an uncut loaf.
 
helli said:
Hence the advice to weigh it.
Click to expand...
+1 the same is true even of the slices in the centre of a supermarket bought loaf, I only mentioned it (and the supermarket link) as getting close-to-10g-per-slice stuck in ones head is going to be quite far from the mark for any normal sized slice of bread if guestimating (and when I slice bread bought from a bakery it tends to be much more generous than that from a pre-sliced loaf!) 🙂

P.S. One can also use the supermarket data to match a similar type of bread, read off the COH/100g, then weigh as @helli suggests, at least this is what I do with unknown/unlabelled foods (while crossing my fingers a little 😉)
 
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indio02 said:
I've decided to spend a month monitoring my daily carb intake and wonder how people do it.

I don't really eat 'processed' food ie mostly foods that don't come with a nutrition label on.
The most carby thing I currently eat is bread. I get it from a local baker and it's made with a starter, flour, salt & water. How would I know the amount of carbs in a weighed slice for instance.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Are you keeping your total in a spreadsheet ?

I looked at carbs per 100g and build myself a little database showing that info, then you just weigh the "dose" (portion size) and multiply by the % per 100g so bread is about 50% carbs roughtly so for a say 20g slice it would have 10g of carbs.
 
I am like @helli

I eat home made bread or yummy stuff from the local baker. Weigh my slice and half it to get a good estimate for the carbs. This accounts for where I choose to cut thinner slices when making a sandwich, or a good wedge to go with soup.
 
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This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.
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