My can of black eye peas says on the label:

[ginkgo]

Total Carbohydrates 16g Under that is says:
Dietary Fiber 4g
Sugars <1g

Do you know what this means? Are you sure. Where did you learn what it means?

How many calories are in the fiber? (4X4) 16 calories. Now here is the hard part. How many calories does your body get from eating this dietary fiber? It gets no calories from that fiber. Do you know why? Also how do they know that the fiber has 16 calories if your body gets none from eating it? They burn it.

One guy said that he likes things simple. Is the above simple? How come they do not explain this in school?

[Fullcrum]

Carbohydrates is a term for all the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen compounds in the food (sans nitrogen, sulfur or phosphorus). Fiber is among these compounds, but it remains undigested. It's because we lack the enzymes to cleave the fiber compounds into individual glucose (or whatever) monomers. If the fiber could be cleaved, it would yield 4 kcal/gram just like any other carbohydrate.

BTW, the other 11 g of carbohydrates are complex, as in, they're not sugars and not fiber, but polysaccharides and starches.

[ginkgo]

Originally Posted by Fullcrum

Carbohydrates is a term for all the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen compounds in the food (sans nitrogen, sulfur or phosphorus). Fiber is among these compounds, but it remains undigested. It's because we lack the enzymes to cleave the fiber compounds into individual glucose (or whatever) monomers. If the fiber could be cleaved, it would yield 4 kcal/gram just like any other carbohydrate.

BTW, the other 11 g of carbohydrates are complex, as in, they're not sugars and not fiber, but polysaccharides and starches.

Yes I know all that. What you are saying is that if you have 20 people (that are men and women) and 9 of them are women, then that is all they need to tell you. With substraction you know that there are 11 men.

Also since they say that there are 2 kinds of carbs, not 3, then the fiber is a complex carb.

[Beuford]

I don't know why they don't explain this stuff in school, but they seem to spend more time just giving the gist of health and fitness. Then next year with a different class, you'll get the gist of it again.

In my experience with school, earlier on in primary school, we learnt the basics about the food pyramid(which I don't support) and every year nothing really changed, just got a bit more indepth each time I suppose. The same is with high school perhaps with a bit more complex stuff, but with my health and fitness classes I never really remember learning anything productive, most of the time we would just be playing sport.

Anyway, I don't think they really have much of a curriculum for teaching the details of health and they never really explain all of whats in the food. I find out all my info on food from the internet, and I've noticed the nutrition listing on food is not very detailed. But of those carbohydrates, they probably don't list what the other 11-12g are. I'm not completely satisfied with my knowledge on carbs yet, but I know that there is at least starch, sugar and fiber. They obviously haven't listed starch, and there could be others too.

[ginkgo]

Here is a simple thing that they do not teach in school. All plant foods have fiber (if not taken out) and all animal foods have no fiber. All plant foods have no cholesterol and all animal foods have cholesterol.

[Hanselich]

Plants like flax seeds and peanuts do contain some cholesterol-like substances, called phytosteroles, but those tend to help lowering serum cholesterol levels

[funchy]

Originally Posted by Beuford

I don't know why they don't explain this stuff in school, but they seem to spend more time just giving the gist of health and fitness. Then next year with a different class, you'll get the gist of it again.

Yes, school provided nutrition information is a waste. All I learned until I got to college was the really old (even worse) Food Pyramid.

And these are the same places that serve students lunches of frozen pizzas, milk, fatty cheeseburgers on cheapo white rolls, and greasy tacos to further "teach" students about nutrition.

Originally Posted by Hanselich

Plants like flax seeds and peanuts do contain some cholesterol-like substances, called phytosteroles, but those tend to help lowering serum cholesterol levels

Good point, hanselich!

I also wanted to throw in: cholesterol in the body isn't always evil. Cholesterol an essential component that our own body makes. It's used for example to build cell membranes & to make hormones such as estrogen, aldosterone, progesterone, and testosterone. It's only a problem when people consume more outside cholesterol from their diet than their body can handle (which is probably try for in most average American diets).