Massive congrats Michelle!

On the mandarins and feijoa, I just stab and guess so I’d like to know as well!

Congrats Michelle xxxx

My GI book doesn’t have mandarin or feijoa but says a medium orange 130g is 10grams of CHO so guessing a large mandarin is around the same sort of weight so 10 grams ish.

We usually do 10 as well. However, on the feijoa’s if they are really ripe..I will up it to 15. Same goes for bananas..we take 15 for those unless they are really ripe. Then we will up it to 20.

Congratulations Michelle!!!

Per Auckland Region Dieticians Carb book

Feijoas – Raw Flesh 1 Average 4g CHO CHO Factor 0.08 Feijoas – With Skin 1 Average 4g CHO CHO Factor 0.05

Mandarin – Raw 60g 1 Small 6g CHO CHO Factor 0.10
Mandarin – With Skin 85g 1 Small 6g CHO CHO Factor 0.07

All nice and low

Congratulations Michelle, that is awesome news!

Hey, I was wondering where does everyone get their carb counting information from? My dietician gave me a booklet produced by the auckland region dieticians, and its got some good general foods in there, but it is a bit limited. I’ve googled some foods, but a couple of times have come out with estimates that have been way off. Can anyone recommend some good carb counting resources?

Karen you need to be careful as Americans count carbs differently. I use this website quite a bit

http://www.calorieking.com.au/foods/

I use the Food Composition Tables put out by Crop & Food Research, Crown Research Institute baqsed in Palmerston North. I have found it very reliable and contains a very large number of foods used in New Zealand. The tables can be obtained from the Crown research Institute (at a price!). Their website is http://www.crop.cir.nz and you can get some information by visiting that website.
According to the tbales mandarins are 9.9 carbs per 100g weight and feijoas are 8 carbs per 100g weight.

I mistyped with the website in my comment – it should be http://www.crop.cri.nz

umm excuse my ignorance but what the hell is CHO CHO factor???is this the new GI ??

CHO = Carbs
CHO Factor = Carb factor. Multiply weight by carb factor to calculate carbs

I was wondering what the CHO CHO was too. I found on things kije fruit we had to find what number worked for us. The only one that I think is accurate from a book or website so far is the 1 carb per small grape.

The only thing I think that is different about how Americans count carbs is that we don’t automatically take the fibre out of the carb number on our packaging. It’s just straight carbs. But the fibre is on the lables so it’s easy enough to do….but good call because it caught me off guard when we got here to NZ.

Uhm…that’s supposed to be “like fruit”…fingers must have been off.

Pays to be careful with that Auckland Dietitians booklet, in the copy I have in front of me there are some pretty serious errors.

Example: Page 11 in my copy, “Linseeds” has recorded a CHO factor of 0.39 (meaning 39g of carb per 100g of linseeds raw), but a quick check at carb-counter.org (remember linseed is called flaxseed in the states) will tell you the actual value of effective carb is closer to 0.06 (6g per 100g).

That could even be an over-estimate, I think the USDA says it’s closer to 0.02, but at least 0.06 and 0.02 are in the same ballpark, 0.39 is practically orbital!

The number in the booklet for that, is inflated 6 and a half times, the difference between 1 unit and 9 units of insulin for me.

Other ones which are particularly “out” on the same page I have noted are pecan nuts and sunflower seeds. I only checked the nuts and seeds page. The other CHO Factors (percentage of item which is carb) on that page are roughly correct, in the ball park anyway.

It also doesn’t have some oddly common things, like (reading the notes I have at some point scribbled on the next page), garlic, capsicum, cauliflower, onion, broccoli, radish, cabbage and ginger.

All of these have reasonable carb contents, garlic and ginger sure might not matter really since you don’t use much, but the others are not ignorable, for me at least.

So yes, what was I saying, right, be careful with that booklet, take the numbers with a grain of salt, if anything seems like it might have a decent fibre content, I would definitely check the numbers at a couple of websites, I like…

http://www.carb-counter.org (look at the Effective Carb)

http://www.nutritiondata.com (make sure you change serving size to 100g then subtract the fibre from total carb to get the effective carb) this site’s data is from the USDA, the other site’s data probably is too but I think it uses an older set of numbers

Congrats Michelle,
These fruits have always caused me problems.
Mandarin – so depends on the size but I am currently using 5g per medium size one and that seems to be working
feijoa – 4g per medium one – from the book given me by the maternity diabetic dietician but working for me (and I am pretty much weighing all my food at the moment – to the extent that I have even on occasion taken scales out – obsessive compulsive tendencies coming out)
Hope this helps

Thanks so much James, Chris and Sianne for those suggestions.

James, I had noticed that too with the Auckland dietitians book, I love pecan nuts and I was overbolusing for them. I haven’t heard about subtracting fibre from the carb count, why do you do that?

@Karen

Fibre is largely not digested in the body, in one end and out the other So it has no practical effect on blood glucose.

In New Zealand our food labels have fibre already separate from carbohydrates, in the states (and other places, not sure?), they include it in the carbohydrates.

So if you are on websites that are overseas take a look at how the fibre is reported – it’s generally obvious if it’s part of the total carbohydrates or not when looking a label, it will be listed like we list “sugars” or “saturated” as components of a the total carb/fat respectively.

Those problems with the book may account for some of the problems i have had with my sugars. Shall have to be even more careful.

Wow you guys! This has all helped me tremendously!!! I find it difficult at times myself with sweetish fruits like mandarins and feijoas because sometimes you can get really really sweet kinds (same with the Golden kiwifruit which I can get through a whole bag in one sitting, shhh) and I ofen wonder if I should count based on how sweet they taste (but how do you measure that?) or on how big the fruit actually is. It’s all swings and roundabouts sometimes, huh!

Thanks James, thats really good to know! I just wish that the dietician had told me this when I started carb counting a few months ago!