The 12-Question Carb Quiz

The answer is false.

Certain types of carbohydrate, such as fiber and glycerin, have little to no effect on blood glucose. Sugar and starches, on the other hand, can cause blood glucose to skyrocket. Different carbohydrate-laden foods elicit different glycemic index responses, and these responses vary from person to person, too.

For example, as a general rule, potatoes cause a rapid rise in blood glucose, while legumes such as soybeans or lentils cause a more gradual rise, because they are digested more slowly. Also, if you talk to a group of people who test their blood sugar, you will find that some individuals experience spikes after foods that cause only a moderate rise in others.

The answer is false

This is often true, but not all the time. It used to be that the color of bread could tell you something, but since whole-grain mania took over the marketplace, color is no longer a reliable indicator.

The craze started back in 1999, when the government began allowing companies to make heart health claims on the labels of products that are 51 percent or more whole grain. Since then, smart marketers have gone to great lengths to get the term “whole-grain” on every product label they can, not to mention tinkering with the color of the dough.

The only way to be sure that a loaf of bread is a healthy choice is to read the ingredients list. If whole-grain flour is the first ingredient (whole-wheat flour, whole-oat flour, etc.), and you don’t see any added sugars or hydrogenated oil in the rest of the list, toss it in your cart!

The answer is false.

The smart gourmand will drain pasta before it’s completely cooked—pulling the pot off the stove just when it reaches the chewy texture known in Italian as al dente, or “to the tooth,” meaning it needs to be chewed. This is the way fine pasta chefs serve their delicacies, but it also happens to moderate the starch’s effect on blood glucose. As with many other foods, the longer pasta cooks, the more water-logged its molecules become, which makes it easier for the body to break them down quickly and deposit a fast-acting dose of glucose into the bloodstream.

Source

Brand-Miller, Jennie, Kaye Foster-Powell, and Joanna McMillan-Price. The Low GI Diet Revolution: The Definitive Science-Based Weight-Loss Plan. New York: Marlowe and Company, 2005.

The answer is true.

It’s so unfair! But yes, reduced-fat dairy products like milk, cheese, and ice cream often contain more grams of carbohydrate than the regular, full-fat fare. The same is true of many reduced-fat cakes, cookies, and the like. (Remember Snackwell® cookies? People scarfed them up, because they were fat-free. The problem was that the fat had been replaced with carbs, and the calories were the same as any other cookie.)

A cup of plain, fat-free yogurt contains 19 grams of carbs; its whole-milk counterpart has 11 grams. A cup of reduced-fat Muenster cheese contains 4 grams of carbs; the full-fat version has 1 gram. The take-home message here is balance, and with high-fat foods, consider sometimes moderating your intake rather than seeking out a low-fat version.

The answer is true.

Protein and carbohydrate each contain four calories per gram, while fat delivers nine calories per gram. This is why foods that are high in fat are generally higher in calories.

The answer is false.

Protein and fat are essential nutrients; carbohydrate is not. The categories of essential nutrients for humans (the nutrients required for normal functioning that the body cannot synthesize on its own) are: vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids (fats), and essential amino acids (proteins). However, it would be impossible to get a nutritionally-balanced diet without consuming carbohydrates in the form of plant foods.

You’ve probably heard of essential amino acids (protein) and essential fatty acids (fat), but never essential carbohydrates.

The answer is true.

Alcohol is a unique substance. The body processes alcohol before it metabolizes fat, protein, or carbs. A 5-ounce glass of wine typically contains 110 calories, 5 grams of carbs, and about 13 grams of alcohol (which accounts for 91 of the calories). These numbers are roughly the same as you will find in a 12-ounce light beer or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor. Most people experience a dip in their blood sugar after consuming alcohol; the glycemic index of beer, wine, and hard liquor is zero.

The answer is false.

In fact, non-alcoholic beers are generally higher in carbs than regular beer—and some are almost double in carb content. O’Doul’s Amber® contains 18 grams of carbohydrates, while a regular beer has about 13 grams. Light beer and low-carb beer weigh in almost equally, with about three grams of carbs in 12 ounces.

The answer is true.

All hard liquors are distilled—which, by definition, means that they contain no carbohydrate. (Beer and wine are fermented rather than distilled, and fermentation results in some residual sugar.) Though liquor is derived from high-carbohydrate substances such as sugar, molasses, potatoes, and grains, once distilled, ethyl alcohol, a zero-carb liquid, is what’s left.

The answer is true.

Fat and fiber are broken down and digested more slowly than other nutrients, and, as a result, slow the absorption of carbohydrates into the blood. Acidic foods, such as vinegar, have a confirmed but less-well-understood moderating effect on glycemic response. What a great reason to include a salad with vinaigrette at meals!

The answer is false.

Sugar-free and low-carb are not one and the same, unfortunately. A product can have no added sugar but plenty of carbs. Case in point: a one-half-cup serving of Breyer’s No-Sugar-Added® chocolate caramel ice cream contains 18 grams of carbs.

The answer is false.

When low-carb eating became de rigeur and companies were scrambling to put out products with fewer carbs than the next guy’s, a slew of tasty candies and other sweet treats flooded the market. The label lingo includes net carbs and effective carbs.

The ingredients that made these products possible are called sugar alcohols. (They have nothing to do with the kind of alcohol that’s in liquor; the name refers to their molecular composition.) These substances sweeten food, but are slowly and incompletely absorbed into the body.

Because of this, many diet experts say to count only half the grams of sugar alcohols in the total carb count of a product. However, the important message for people with diabetes is: sugar alcohols affect everyone differently, and different types can have different effects on the same person. Go easy on these treats, and test your responses carefully.