How do you figure out carb factors for your own recipie?

[BrendaK]

I want carb FACTORS, not carb counts. Fruit salad drives me crazy. I just cut up fresh fruit and mix it together, but I don't know how to figure out a carb factor. Tonight we mixed up strawberries and grapes so I took the average of the 2 -- strawberries are .08 and grapes are .14, so I did .11, not sure if it worked because he was a little high after dinner. But how would I have figured it out if I would have thrown in banana and apples?

What about other homemade recipies? Any good hints for figuring out carb factors for those?

Please don't tell me to add up all the carbs in the recipie and divide by the number of servings I have. I know how to do that -- but it doesn't work when you have a big bowl of fruit salad and don't know how to divide it evenly :rolleyes:

I'm really wondering how carb factors are figured in the first place and how I can figure them out on my own with my own recipies.

[liveitxloveit]

shouldn't you have added .08 and .14?

[BrendaK]

shouldn't you have added .08 and .14?

Well I don't think so. If I would have added them it would have made 1/3 cup of strawberries and grapes 20 carbs or something like that. I took the average because it seemed the fruit salad was about 1/2 strawberries and 1/2 grapes.

If you look at carb factors for pizza, for example (.27) You don't take all the ingredients in the pizza and add the carb factors together -- that would make a pizza crazy high.

I'm talking carb factors, not carb counts. Carb factors are the percentage in weight that the food is carbs, not how many carbs the whole thing is.

[liveitxloveit]

ooh, okay. i don't do carb factors, so i was just assuming.

[Gwyn]

Hi Brenda,

You are right about using an average with things like fruit salad. It will work if the weights of the items are equal, that should have worked for your salad.

Check out this webpage for an example of how it works:

http://www.carbperfectionist.com/Smoothie.aspx

You can also "weight" each item if you use different amounts in your recipe (ie multiply by .75 if the item makes up 3/4 of the recipe). It's a bit more work, but it's still a good method.

PS I would have used .7 for the berries and .18 for grapes--do you subtract the fiber up front?