TechnoLust's Journal: Since when does 0 calorie != low calorie

I love sour things. WAY more than I love sweet things. Most "sour candies" are sweet candies with a light dusting of citric acid. So you get the initial "WOW that's sour" followed by sickly sweetness. Blah. So I tried these Sugar Free Ice Breakers Sours. They are sour through and through. If you can't handle it, there's no crunching it to get to the sweet, oh no! If you crunch it they get WORSE! I can help but crunch them. BRING ON THE SOUR, BITCHES! Anyway, I'm looking at the front and it says, "Not a low calorie food." I immediately flipped the box over to see how many calories they have since I've eaten about 20 of them today. 0 Calories. Umm... last I checked 0 was a low as you could go in the calorie department, so why the disclaimer on the front?

The ingredients are SORBITOL, MALIC ACID, and TARTARIC ACID. Then less than 2% of MALITOL, MALTODEXTRIN, ASPARTAME, Citric Acid, Medium Chain Triglycerides, etc, so maybe it's the word FOOD they are afraid of. ;)

Aspartame?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

No thanks! :-)

Looks like...

[Otter]

Here [fda.gov] is the relevant law, although I'm still not sure why your candy falls into this category.

Re:

[TechnoLust]

One of the rules says something about the serving size has to be greater than 30g and the serving size on these are 0.8g, so maybe that's it.

It just sounds bad...

[johndiii]

...to label something that you're supposed to eat as "Not a Food". :-) Although there are a lot of things that should have that label...

Re:

[nocomment]

haggis and lutefisk come to mind.

Re:

[Shadow Wrought]

Or any "Value Menu." At least Haggis and Lutefisk were once alive.

Re:

[TechnoLust]

Yeah, I'm still not sure how McDonald's gets away with calling those things "hamburgers" when they have a higher cardboard content than the boxes they ship in.

Malitol

[Servo]

Malitol is a sugar alcohol. They have very low to no caloric value but still effectively has carbs, so it affects your blood sugar the same way as it if did have calories. If you are on a diet, you shouldn't consume sugar alcohols, hence the label. Sometimes they are marketed to diabetics, but some people have a bad reaction so its best not to eat them if you are watching your carbs. I'm not entirely up to speed on the whole process, but I think they have no caloric value because they don't get absorbed