A few years ago my boss at the time got my family a tin of cookies and brownies from a company I never heard of called Cheryl & Co. It was a special occasion being that my wife and I were blessed with our first daughter. Those treats were hands-down the best I’ve ever tasted. Plus, they come individually wrapped to seal in all the goodiness (yes I made this word up). Since that time, just over three years ago, we have treated others to the scrumptious Cheryl & Co treats for special occasions.
Recently, we placed an order for someone that lives just up the street for their special occasion. Just to top off the order, we added a few treats for ourselves and had the whole order shipped to our house. My wife placed the order and decided to try out a few of the sugar free cookies to see if they were any good. Plus, with me being a diabetic and all, she was probably just trying to win a few points by looking out for me (wink, wink).
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I tried the sugar free cookie and it was really good; almost as good as the regular ones, but not quite over-the-top good. I looked at the nutritional information to find out how many carbs were hiding in these bad boys. To my astonishment, I found that the sugar free cookies had 20 carbs per cookie and the regular ones only had 17. The fact that the carbs were higher in a product that claims to be sugar free isn’t a news flash for me. I found this out a while ago with other products.
I really believe that there is some false advertisement in these sugar free products. You would think if they are sugar free, the carb content would be significantly less, right? Why the heck would I buy sugar free if the carb content is higher? Well, here’s the answer, I don’t. I’m not fooled by this gimmick. Yes, they probably are a little lower in calories, but that doesn’t really concern me.
I know there are different types of sugars and that they can affect your blood sugar in slightly different ways. But seriously, do you count sugar free carbs differently than regular carbs? I don’t. They are all carbs to me. There is one exception to my rule of passing on sugar free. When it comes to gum and medicine or hard candy, I always go sugar free.
Do you try to get the sugar free products or do you pass? Does this surprise you?
We also don’t bolus any different. Carbs are carbs and they all get counted the same way unless it’s got more than 5g of fiber and then we subtract.
It actually surprises me a little that it has more carbs, though if it had the same number, it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ll get the Murray sugar free brand at the store, and they’ll often have the same total carbs as regular cookies, though maybe half of them will be sugar alcohol. Which I suppose is its own issue–sugar alcohols usually get me near the same in the end, they’re just significantly slower–like a few hours.
They probably aren’t lower calorie either though! Or at least, certainly not lower fat! Sometimes those things are worse. Which is just funny. I’ve also noticed that in low fat products will be higher carbs sometimes.