FDA Label Requirments Can Cause Confusion with Yes! To Cookies All Natural, Gluten Free, Starch Free, Sugar Free Cookies

Hi,

I just received the Ginger Spice cookies, which are very yummy.  I do have a question about the nutritional info listed on the label.  Something is amiss.

If you have 4 grams of fat (36 calories), 1 gram of protein (9 calories) and 10 carbs (40 calories), the total calories per cookie should be 85.

Is there a mistake on the label?

Thank you,

Dawn Gould

PS  It's nice to find a sugar free, gluten free treat!  Thanks!

Dear Dawn,

Thank you for your kind note.  I'm thrilled that you like the Old Fashioned Ginger Spice Cookies.  I can appreciate your confusion over the label.  The label is correct.  The problem is actually with the current FDA nutrition facts label requirements. Traditional FDA labeling requirements are inadequate and frustrating for new generation products such as Yes! To Cookies.  Nobody else is making a baked food with carbohydrates that are entirely not digested into food energy.  There are many areas where traditional labels fall short.  Some companies even use these holes in traditional nutritional facts to misrepresent the health benefits of a product.  Take for example “sugar free” used on so many products.  What this actually means is that the product is free of sucrose but still can contain many ingredients that metabolize equivalent to sucrose.  The current labeling practice is built around the idea that there are 3 categories of food that convert to energy and provide nutrition when eaten.  These categories are protein, fat and carbohydrates.  A great deal of focus has been placed on the fat in food.  Saturated, unsaturated and other kinds of fats are broken out from total fat so that you can see how much of each kind of fat is present. However there is a great deal of confusion about carbohydrates.  Carbohydrates are determined by subtracting the protein and fat from a total serving of food. Everything that remains is considered a carbohydrate.  We’ve been taught that carbohydrates, with the exception of sugar are healthy and necessary.  This is an arbitrary assessment since all digestible carbohydrates contain the same food energy of 4 calories per gram with the exception of insoluble fiber that isn’t digested so has 0 calories of food energy and soluble fiber that has 4 calories per gram but isn’t digested to glucose so it has no effect on blood sugar and so is not absorbed as energy but rather as fatty acid.  Sugar alcohols are also carbohydrates and generally considered to have half the food energy of sugar so are 2 calories per gram with the exception of erythritol that is actually only 5% digested so is considered to be 0 calories per gram like fiber.  On the label, total carbohydrates are broken down into sugar (sucrose), fiber, sugar alcohols and remaining carbohydrates (that magically transform into being healthy since their not sucrose and called sugar even though the effect the body in the same way as sugar).  What is not explained is how these carbohydrates affect the human body such as are they quickly metabolized or more slowly i.e. glycemic index and how much is converted into food energy and at what rate this food energy is absorbed.  Protein and carbohydrates are accepted to have 4 calories per gram of food energy.  Fat is considered to have 8 calories per gram of food energy.  This does not take into consideration the nutritional value of the food.  Realize that this is all about FOOD ENERGY or Calories and not about nutrition. Starch and flour have almost no nutrition unless it’s been artificially added while vegetables have lots of nutrients.  Fruit and milk have nutrients but contain massive amounts of quickly absorbed carbohydrates that rapidly metabolize to sugar in the body with the same harmful effects as eating sucrose table sugar.   In other words if you have a sandwich with 8 grams of protein it will have 32 calories from protein. If the sandwich has 6 grams of fat, it will have 48 calories from fat.  If your sandwich has 40 grams of carbohydrate it is considered to have 160 calories from carbohydrates with the exception of insoluble fiber (I’ll get back to this). Under the total carbohydrates you’ll find grams of sugar listed as well as grams of fiber.  Occasionally you’ll also see grams of sugar alcohol listed. So using our example of a sandwich you might find 40 total grams of carbohydrate of which 5 are listed as sugar and 2 are listed as fiber, which leaves 33 total carbohydrates that are not sugar or fiber.  What are these carbohydrates?  We know from popular media that sugar is considered evil.  We’ve all been told that fiber is healthy for us and that many of us do not eat enough fiber.  What about the other 33 carbohydrates?  We know that these 33 carbohydrates are still 4 calories per gram or a total of 132 calories of food energy just like sugar and require the same amount of insulin to convert into energy or to be stored as fat.  The 2 grams of soluble fiber will digest to 8 grams of healthy fatty acid to feed the good bacteria in our digestive track.  If the remaining carbohydrates are insoluble fiber, they will pass harmlessly through our digestive track without being converted to food energy.  A good example of this is celery that is mostly cellulose fiber.  As human beings, we simply don’t have the right enzymes in our body to break down and convert insoluble fiber to food energy, so it has no calories.  Since labels are not required to show insoluble fiber since it isn’t digested, some of the carbohydrates may be insoluble fiber. In the Yes! To Cookies original label the company that provided our nutritional facts panel didn’t list insoluble fiber so we were left with a mysterious 3 grams of unexplained carbohydrates in a product that we claim has no digestible carbohydrates.  Later we corrected this inaccuracy by revising our nutritional facts panel to show the insoluble fiber as well as soluble fiber so that now instead of showing 3 grams of fiber we now show 6 grams of fiber. Since only the soluble fiber is actually absorbed and converted to fatty acid and but not to glucose (sugar) we show the calories from the soluble fiber but since there are no calories from insoluble fiber we don’t show the calories from the 3 grams of insoluble fiber.  Sugar alcohols are another difficult topic when it comes to understanding the carbohydrates shown on a food label.  The conventional rule of thumb is that sugar alcohols are 2 calories per gram instead of 4 calories per gram of other digestible carbohydrates such as starch, flour, sugar, fructose fruit sugar, etc.   In other words sugar alcohols are considered to be 50% digested to glucose (sugar).  The FDA gives us the option to name the sugar alcohol used instead of the more vague designation of sugar alcohols if only a single sugar alcohol is used.  In Yes! To Cookies we only use erythritol which is categorized as a sugar alcohol but erythritol is the only sugar alcohol that is 95% not digested or in other words only 5% instead of 50% is digested to glucose (sugar).  What this means is that the erythritol listed is considered calorie free since only 5% or barely a trace amount digests to glucose.  This is such a small amount that it has no significant impact on blood sugar and doesn’t contribute calories. So of the 4 grams of erythritol in Yes! To Cookies less than 1 calorie is digested.  On our original label we listed erythritol as sugar alcohol but we became startlingly aware that many people were considering the sugar alcohol to be 2 calories per gram or 50% digested to glucose like maltitol, xylitol, sorbitol, etc.  We changed to listing erythritol on the new labels to more accurately show the unique benefit of the erythritol we use over traditional sugar alcohols used in other products.  Erythritol is very different from every other sugar alcohol.  Unfortunately, even though erythritol has been available for use as an all-natural sweetener in foods for nearly 30 years, many dietitians and doctors as well as consumers are not familiar with this alternative sweetener.  Recently several new products such as Truvia have entered the market using erythritol as a safe zero calorie sweetener and we anticipate seeing far more as blood sugar management and weight loss continue to become an ever more urgent issue.  So of the 10 grams of total carbohydrates in a serving of Yes! To Cookies, 3 grams are soluble fiber that contributes 12 calories, 3 grams are insoluble fiber that the body can’t absorb and so don’t contribute any calories and 4 grams of erythritol are 95% not digested so contribute less than 1 calorie.  So instead of 10 grams of total carbohydrates contributing 40 calories, the carbohydrates in Yes! To Cookies only contribute 12 calories. The 12 calories of carbohydrates in Yes! To Cookies are not digested into glucose (sugar) so do not impact blood sugar. So the total calories for Yes! To Cookies are for 4 grams of fat you have 32 calories plus 12 calories from the soluble fiber plus 4 calories for the 1 gram of protein for a total of 45 calories.  Our label still shows 60 calories so obviously the company that manufactures our labels to FDA guidelines are still miscalculating something but it’s better to show extra calories based on the FDA’s guidelines even though inaccurate than to make them angry.  My advice is to always read the ingredients and spend time to learn what each ingredient does in your body.  Most of the ingredients, even the strange sounding ones can be searched on the Internet and quickly identified as a problem or harmless.  You’ll notice that Yes! To Cookies ingredients are very few and all natural. 

How To Start Selling Health Foods Such as Gluten Free, Sugar Free, All Natural Yes! To Cookies

Dear Sir.  I am 51 year old woman, recently diagnosed with pre-diabetic/high blood pressure and other illnesses, and feel ill all the time.  Living alone, it is often difficult for me to cook, and I am frustrated by the lack of low carb/low sodium convenience foods at the markets in my area.  I cannot wait to try your cookies and will email you my opinion of them.  I greatly look forward to trying them.  I have a question.  Should I ever get well enough, I'd like to perhaps start a very small low carb/low sodium convenience food business.  I know nothing about how businesses work; before I became ill I was a legal secretary.  Can you recommend any books I might read?  I notice you now sell your cookies on Netrition.com, my favorite low carb online store.  Would you mind telling me the process of creating a small business, packaging your food items, and persuading Netrition.com to sell them?  I hope this isn't too much to ask.  I am not trying to be nosey; it is just that I am too ill to work as a legal secretary/legal word processor; my illnesses have negatively effected my nervous system and my short term memory is no longer sound.  I'm only 51 and trying to think of something I can do the rest of my life.  I don't know if I can make food for other people, I can't really cook consistently for myself yet as I feel so ill, but trying to help myself and others with pre-diabetes/diabetes/high blood pressure appeals to me, as that is what I'm dealing with myself, and I thought I'd like to learn something about the process of how to help myself and others on restricted diets and how to create and sell food products to them.  Thank you sir, and thank you for coming up with a healthy cookie.  

Sincerely, 
Stacy H - Southern CA

Dear Stacy,

First of all I'm very sorry for your health problems.  Before I was introduced to The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain I felt incredibly sick. I'd always felt healthy in my younger years but after I turned forty my health seemed to just start to decline.  When my doctor, Dr. Lane Sebring told me about The Paleo Diet book I scoffed at the idea of reading what I considered to be another fad diet book.  I'd attempted other weight loss plans that didn't seem to stem the creeping growth of my girth.  At 300 lbs I was on blood pressure medicine and still had high blood pressure.  I felt terrible.  I was still jogging and eating what I considered to be a healthy diet as prescribed by our public health organizations ADA, AHA, etc. and I felt miserable.  Now I and my wife each are much healthier after returning to the eating plan of our genetic hunter-gatherer ancestors.  I encourage you to keep working on eliminating the foods that digest rapidly to glucose that are the bane of the modern diet, which includes grains, dairy (particularly milk), potatoes, rice, corn, pasta and all other highly starchy foods.  I understand your frustration with the lack of convenience foods.  This is truly one of the challenges that it is keeping America and the rest of the world sick and making multi-billionaires of the huge corporations that grow and produce these foods, the pharmaceutical companies that then offer band-aid solutions to treat symptoms instead of admitting biological fact and changing eating behavior which is actually at the root of many serious health problems.  You may discover as you reset your metabolism with healthy meats, vegetables and fats that the inflammation diminishes and you are revitalized both physically and mentally.  I expect over the next few years to see more and more convenience foods such as Yes! To Cookies and Miracle Noodles introduced to help meet what I see as a growing need for foods that do not digest to excess glucose to replace the common foods in our traditional high-starch diets.  As for starting a business as a small health food retailer, I want to first encourage you to honestly ask yourself whether you truly want the challenge of running a business.  Your desire to help others who share your health issues is admirable but I would suggest that you perhaps find someone with a health food store and spend a few days as a volunteer to get an idea if this what you'd truly like to accomplish.  Should you decide that you want to have an online store you may want to research what this involves.  You'll need to source products, set prices, find customers, promote your store and of course find the capital to implement your vision.  I don't want to discourage you but I also want you to realize the challenges you'll face.  I would suggest that perhaps you consider what talents you've built and then see yourself and your benefit not as a job or a company but rather in broader terms of what does someone need and how can you provide  something that they will value and reward you to accomplish.  Find a quiet place, release the fear and allow yourself to recognize your own unique worth and then explore where your unique set of skills and knowledge take you.  The process to bake Yes! To Cookies was available for thousands of years but it wasn't developed yet because the needs weren't so evident and I approached baking from an entirely new direction.  You, too can reinvent your life and rebuild your health but you'll want to first honestly contemplate and understand your full worth and then take an eagles eye view of the world around you and decide what will move you in the direction that you want to go and throw out the anticipated and open your mind to the possible.  You may find that there are companies and programs that would benefit from what you can provide as an independent contractor working from your home helping others to learn about how to improve their health.  I encourage you to recognize the incredible life and possibilities in front of you and explore these with your whole heart.  The books I'd recommend that you read are Deepok Chopra's Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories for the eye opening truth about how to heal yourself and help others to do the same.

 

Yes! To Cookies
www.yestocookies.com
Zero Starch! Zero Sugar! Zero Gluten! All-Natural!
877-TRU-ZERO (877-878-9376)

What are Gluten Free, Sugar Free, Starch Free, All Natural Yes! To Cookies About?

Yes! To Cookies is more than a snack.  Y2C grew out of a life philosophy and the desire we had to reclaim our health and our life.  Since we nearly eliminated all starchy foods from our meals our health and lifestyle have been extraordinarily better.  I actually came up with idea for Yes! To Cookies when I learned that fiber does not digest to glucose.  All other baked foods are made from starch and flour.  The problem with starch and flour is that they digest to glucose (blood sugar) identical to sucrose table sugar.  So while we demonize the soft drink and candy industry for ruining the world's health, other foods made from wheat, corn, rice, potato, soy, tapioca, oat and other forms of quickly digested carbohydrates are considered safe and healthy. This misconception is destroying lives by contributing to diabetes, obesity, heart disease, autism, ADHD, cancer, celiac disease and a wide range of other health problems.  How do I know?  In 2002 I and my wife each weighed nearly 300 pounds eating what we thought was the traditional healthy diet.  My blood pressure was 160/100 on blood pressure medicine.  My wife is a T1 insulin dependent diabetic.  Her blood sugars were constantly out of control.  I had constant indigestion.  We both felt horrible.  Our doctor, Dr. Lane Sebring in Wimberley Texas recommended that we read Dr. Loren Cordain's book, The Paleo Diet http://thepaleodiet.com/ . I'm not a fine of fad diets and I'd already tried a few with only yo-yo diet results that lead to more weight gain.  After wassailing about reading it for about two months I finally broke down and decided to give it a try.  I was amazed that the information it gave made sense so we started to follow the diet that Dr. Cordain said our genetic ancestors ate, which goes against the modern diet.  Within a month we had each lost over 10 lbs but as the months went by the pounds continued to come off.  I'm not going to tell you that we didn't have moments of back sliding. We'd slip and start to eat traditional foods made from starch and suddenly we'd start to gain back the weight.  We'd also notice that like any addictive drug, these foods made us crave more so we literally had to fight to stay "on the wagon" just like alcohol or smoking.  It's no wonder that so many people can't imagine giving up potatoes, bread, pasta, rice and other high carbohydrate foods.  Within two years we'd EACH lost over one-hundred (100) pounds.  My blood pressure was back to normal and I was off blood pressure medicine. I no longer suffered from indigestion.  Oddly, whenever I would eat starchy foods for a couple days my indigestion would return with a vengeance!  My wife was able to cut her insulin use to about one-third of what it had been.  We became curious why this had happened and why so many others like us were having problems with their health and their weight.  We began to study and read authors such as Dr. Richard Bernstein, Diabetes Solution http://www.diabetes-book.com/ and Gary Taubes Good Calories, Bad Calories http://www.garytaubes.com/writing/books/good-calories-bad-calories/ as well as other books.  It soon became obvious that the problem wasn't a lack of clear information but rather that the truth is inconvenient.  Take for example a recent interview on the Dr. Oz show with Gary Taubes, http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/man-who-thinks-everything-dr-oz-says-wrong-pt-1  where Dr. Oz makes a feeble attempt to undermine Taube's scientific proof with theatrics and posturing to his audience but no clinical evidence to support his mainstream opinions.  One aspect of the Dr. Oz show did ring true.  Changing behavior is difficult, particularly dietary habits such as snacking.  We feel cheated when we're unable to have the treats that others enjoy.  For just that reason I spent four years developing Yes! To Cookies.  My plan wasn't to go into the cookie business but rather to develop a snack that my wife and I could enjoy that didn't raise her blood sugar and didn't cause diarrhea like foods sweetened with maltitol, xylitol, etc.  I didn't know at the time that it was considered impossible to bake foods entirely from fiber without using some form of starch as a binder.  I later learned that I'd broken new ground by developing a process to bake cookies and other foods made entirely from fiber and sweetened with zero calorie, all natural sweeteners erythritol, stevia and luo han that have no significant effect on blood glucose (erythritol is 95% not digested).  These sweeteners also do not cause the uncomfortable laxative effects of sugar alcohols such as maltitol, xylitol, sorbitol and others.  We were able to eat cookies that didn't cause a blood sugar spike and didn't cause the unpredictable slow blood sugar rise of sweeteners such as agave.  Later with my wife's encouragement and the vision of a financial partner who, too, saw the need for foods that don't digest to glucose we launched ReThink Nutrtion, Inc. with our first baked product Yes! To Cookies.  We called them Yes! To Cookies because now nearly everyone can enjoy cookies without health problems.  Since they were introduced we learned about people who suffer from gluten intolerance and celiac disease who too can enjoy Yes! To Cookies.  When we took out the other poisons of starch, flour and sugar we also removed the gluten.  We've also had the pleasure of learning that there are people who are fighting against yeast infection who need to reduce foods that that digest to sugar.  We've discovered cancer survivors whose doctors have prescribed diets free of sugar and starch due to the inflammation it causes.  We've spoken to parents of children with Attention Deficit Disorder, Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD and Autism all who have restricted or eliminated starch and sugar from their diets with significant improvements in behavior.  All of this evidence is available with a little research.  It's amazing the benefits of reducing starch and sugar, including excess fruit in the modern diet.  Yes! To Cookies is a helpful tool to aid in replacing traditional high calorie, high carbohydrate snacks with healthy fiber.  Most people only eat about half the fiber that is recommended each day.  Now instead of sprinkling yucky powder on food to add fiber, you can simply eat a couple cookies.  Also fiber makes you feel full and slows the sugar in the other foods you eat to reduce blood sugar spike.  Over the last eight years I've learned a great deal about nutrition, diabetes, labels, ingredients, survival tactics to stay low carbohydrate in the modern world and much more.  In these blogs I will share my insights with you and trust that some of you will benefit as much as I have from what I've discovered and learned on this journey.   Until next time have a happy, healthy day! ---David Fulton, developer Yes! To Cookies, www.yestocookies.com