Smart Carb #1 from Julian Bakery

Julian Bakery claims its Smart Carb #1 is the top low carb bread on the market. It appears to be the most heavily promoted – it come on top of the ad sections of both Google and Bing when I did searches for “low carb bread”. The Smart Carb #1 product label claims 13g total carbohydrate, 12g fiber and 1g net carbs. Based on my nutrition analysis and on my blood glucose tests after eating this bread 6 times,  the real fiber count appears to be much lower and net carbs much higher than Julian Bakery claims.

The average increase in my blood glucose an hour after eating Smart Carb #1 bread from Julian Bakery (6 tests) was 47 mg/dl, more than twice as much as any other bread I tested. The average increase in my blood glucose should go up with net carbs, not down, so my average increase in blood glucose after eating Oasis Flaxseed bread (6g net carbs) should have been much higher than after eating Smart Carb #1 (1g net carb) – just the opposite of what my tests showed.

Jimmy Moore, a prominent low carb blogger, also found that Smart Carb #1 bread from Julian Bakery causes a significant blood glucose spike .

I analyzed the ingredients used by Julian Bakery in its Smart Carb #1 product to see if they are consistent with its claim of 1 net carb.

According to 21 CFR 101.4(a), ingredients are required to be listed in descending order of predominance by weight. I looked up nutrition data on the internet for the top 5 ingredients listed on the Smart Carb #1 label in the order shown on the label, and constructed a table of what I found. The carb counts in the table are for an ounce of each ingredient.

* Julian Bakery lists “sprouts of kamut”. I was unable to find carb counts for sprouts of kamut, so this table shows carb counts for kamut.

The ingredients listed by Julian Bakery do not appear to be consistent with a product that has 13g carb and 12g fiber, as Julian Bakery claims. This results in a fiber/CHO ratio of 92%. Whole grain wheat, the first ingredient on the Smart Carb #1 list and therefore the most predominant by 21 CFR 101.4(a), has 20g total carbohydrate (CHO) and only 3g fiber, for a fiber/CHO ratio of just 15%. Most of the other top ingredients have similar fiber/CHO ratios. Simple arithmetic indicates that the Julian Bakery claim of 1 net carb for for its Smart Carb #1 bread is not credible by a long shot. My blood glucose tests appear to confirm this.

The tables below list carb counts for the first 5 nutrients in Chompie’s Carbs…Not! Sesame Bread and Oasis Flaxseed bread. The fiber/CHO ratio of of the top nutrients of these competing products are much higher than the top Smart Carb #1 ingredients. My test results for these and all the other bread products I tested (other than Smart Carb #1) appear to confirm that they are, indeed, low net carb products – at least, compared to Smart Carb #1.

Row of Smart Carb #1 at Whole Foods Market

I bought Smart Carb #1 at Whole Foods Market – it was the only low carb bread they carried, and they had a lot of it. Patrons of Whole Foods may want to ask that they stock other low carb bread.