Confused: is this food label lying?

[Saracen]

I use a seed blend which I love. It adds a fantastic crunch to salads and I have also begun to snack on it, so the amount I eat is creeping up.

When dh did the shopping he thought he'd save money by buying the ingredients separately so I could make it up myself. But the labels of all the constituent ingredients indicate that they are way higher in carbs than the product I've been using. This can't be right, can it?

It is The Food Doctor's Savoury Seed Blend, and here's what its label says:

Ingredients: Roasted Seed Mix (81%) [Sunflower seeds, Pumpkin seeds, Wheat free soya sauce (Soya beans, sea salt)], Linseed (8%), Toasted sesame seeds (7%), Hulled hemp seeds (4%).

Carbohydrate 2.4 g per 100g, Fibre 17.6g per 100g.

So if I look up the top few ingredients, the carbs in

Dry roasted hulled sunflower seeds 24g / 100g
and
Roasted salted hulled pumpkin seeds 13.4g / 100g

Using this reference: www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/generic/sunflower-seeds-hulled-dry-roasted?portionid=52087&portionamount=100.000

[Happy36]

24% carbs in sunflower seeds looks high to me. I am not an expert, though.

Can you e-mail or tweet the Food Doctor?

[PetulaGordino]

Is fat secret an American site? They list carbs differently in the US to the UK. In the UK the fibre is already subtracted from the total carbs, but for US labelling they include fibre in the total carbs. Fibre is not digestible so doesn't count.

So based on that the food doctor mix would be 20g carbs according to US labelling, but you would subtract the fibre to get the net 2.4g carbs.

You need to use the actual labels, or look up UK carb counts.

The other thing is that it will vary - at best you're getting an average figure

[miffy49]

Yup, I would bet that its Fat Secret! I use it and its like a lot of these sites in that it relies on members to enter the foods. In the USA the labelling laws are different and a lot of the members are in the USA.

Like PetulaGordino says, in the UK we label fibre as a separate entity. In the USA they add fibre into the carb count. This net carb thing causes loads of confusion. I would go by what it says on the bags of seeds.

[Saracen]

Thanks guys!

Yes,that was just a miscellaneous site I found by googling - I was having a bit of trouble finding the carb count in grams per 100g, and also for roasted seeds without shell. Pumpkin seeds including the shell are bound to be much lower.

I'm still confused though. Here's what it says on a couple of Tesco Whole Foods packages.

Sunflower seeds carbs 17.0g / 100g, fibre 6.0g / 100g
Pumpkin seeds carbs 4.7g / 100g, fibre 6.0g / 100g

so there's no way a mix which is composed 81% of those two ingredients could have a carb count of 2.4g / 100g is there? or does the roasting have any effect, because the Tesco ones are raw?

I think I'll follow Happy's suggestion and get in touch with Food Doctor to ask.

Cheers!

[Fourarmsv2]

Roasting would remove water so should increase % carbs I think?

[PetulaGordino]

Or would add fat and decrease %age carbs - hard to say really