I was checking calorie content of my dry split peas (I was going to make a soup) and noticed that calories do not add up. I tried to calculate calories myself by adding up cals from fat, carbs and protein. And what I discovered is that manufacturer did not add calories from fiber to overall calorie count. I though about it for a second and I think it makes sense - from my bio classes I remember that people can not digest fiber, it just goes through us. So, do we need to consider calories from fiber in our overall daily allowance? It would make a big change for me, because I am "fiber crazy", I take anything between 30 to 80 grams every day (and my digestive system loves me for that), it is between 120 and 320 calories a day... What are your thoughts?
The fibre you eat is presumably contained within foods that also contain energy?.... You still need to count the energy from those foods. Also there's soluble fibre and insoluble fibre. If 1 medium apple contains 72 calories you can't say 'the apple has 3.3g fibre so I'm going to deduct 15 calories'... I don't think it works like that.
Fiber is a carbohydrate, but just like we can't digest cellulose, which is also a carbohydrate, we don't absorb calories from fiber, so it's included in the number of grams of carbohydrates on a nutrition label, but its lack of calories is taken into account in the calorie count. So, if something has 10 grams of carbohydrates, and 2 grams of fiber, it gets 32 of its calories (4 calories per gram x 8 grams) from carbohydrates, and that will be reflected in the calorie count.
Please see the following petition from the Unilever company to the FDA.
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/04/ju ly04/071604/04p-0298-sup00002-vol2.pdf
It was determined that calories derived from dietary fiber do not have to be accounted for in the total calorie content listed on nutrition labels. This determination was made by the FDA, in part, by research provided to them by a food company... Go Figure!!! So, if you trust the FDA, don't count fiber calories. If, like me, you do not trust any part of the Federal Government, then you can't believe anything you see on a nutrition label anyway, so it really doesn't matter what you count... it's probably wrong.
