Just pulled this up in a search because I was like "dang" why do people keep saying olives are such a great low carb snack? They are not that low carb! But that is because I only eat the black and never looked at the carbs for the green. I do use the black sparingly but can't eat them like a snack because I would find it hard to restrain myself from just keeping popping them, and their fat content is not enough to satiate me. I am better off eating nuts than black almonds for the satiety factor.

Like nuts, black olive are one of those things that I had to practice moderation in order to keep them in my regular OP food list. It the early days of the diet when I was still snacking I could easily down 1/2 a can in a day. I had a bad habit of wanting to grab a bite every time I went into the kitchen. If a can of olives was open, it was fair game. Snacking was adding up to a 4th meal a day and that was going to result in my weight stalling out well before goal if I did not do something about it.

Over time my weight loss slowed and I started working on bad habits. I had a life-long habit of snacking and overeating. Before I was feeding blood sugar spikes and crashes. Eating low carb made this no longer the case. Snacking now was just a bad habit. I worked on and eventually succeeded in eliminating stacking most days. I was surprised to learn that I could actually stay satisfied from a meal until it was time for the next one. I was learning how to feed true hunger.

Certain OP foods that are calorie dense and have a higher carb count need to be eaten in moderation. I had trouble doing that with some things. I had to put olives and nuts (and Quest Bars, peanut butter, and 90% cocoa dark chocolate) into "timeout" for a while. When I added them back to my diet I did so as part of my lunch at work. I'd measure out 1 oz. and having no opportunity for seconds (or thirds) by eating them away from home did help. Eventually I could add an ounce of nuts or olives to my dinner plate as well. I don't do it everyday. But when I do have such things I can now keep to my chosen limits most of the time. I'm still not perfect, but I am doing better at it.

Essentially, I had to practice moderation. With some practice you can retrain yourself to do it. I can have nuts and olives in my diet. They are not a problem. That is helpful to me because nuts and olives are one of the few LC convenience foods that are ready-to-eat and can be taken with you on the go.

I don't think there's a very significant difference between black and green olives.

Green, pickled olives, according to data from the USDA: have about 4 carbs per 100g (3.5 oz) 3 of which is fiber.

Black olives have 6 carbs per 100g 3 of which is fiber.

100g of olives is quite a few olives.

I'm not sure if they're both pitted or not. If the green olives are unpitted and the back ones are pitted, it'd make the green ones look lower in carbs.

Anyway, I count olives as a wonderful low carb food. Maybe not a good idea to eat a whole can in a sitting, but I often use 1/3 of a can on my salads.

Whoa! I thought the Atkins book says up to 10 olives a day on Induction?

I only eat about 3-4, but never counted the carbs.. I bought Mezzetta Fancy Colossal Green Olives (2 olives = 0 carbs & 1 carb fiber) and Pearls Garlic Stuffed Green Olives (2 olives = <1 carbs).

Am I doing this wrong?

this is one where i think you are worrying a bit too much....do you really like a whole cup?
i would think 1/4 is more likely, which is only 1net carb?

i prefer the black ones, too
they seem--- juicier?

This is from the official site of CREA, Italian government agency on nutritional research.

Green olives: carbs=1 grams per 100 grams = 1%
fibers= 3%
fibers do not include carbs, so the net amount of edible carbohydrates is 1%.

I just weighted green large olives yesterday.
1 big olive from that specific batch, without the pit, was 8 grams.
12 large olives, pitted, were about 100 grams.
The net carbs I got out of those 12, satisfying olives was 1 puny gram. Good bang for the buck, undisputably.

Of course, the weighing should be done for every batch of olives, unless it comes from the same producer in the same caliber.

I also checked black olives. They are reported to be 0.8% carbs.

My suspicion is that hi carbs from olives might derive from sugar addition, whether it si declared or not.

As a matter of fact, canned olives with unspecified color in the same table are reported to be 5% carbs.

Angelix can you help me understand what you mean by "fibers do not include carbs so the net amount of carbs is 1%".

I have been deducting grams of fiber from grams of carbs off Italian labels in order to arrive at my net carb and just want to make sure I am doing that right. But in this case, the label would have read 4 grams carbs with 3 from fiber resulting in 1 gram NC. I have never seen where the grams from fiber has exceeded the grams from total carbs.

Nikki, I'm just writing here what I read on the official tables ('Green olives in salamoia', serving size is 100 grams). Salamoia is a kind of brine, water with hi salt concentration. The contents are about the same for 'Green olives' without salamoia.

Proteins: 1.2 g
Fats: 11 g
Available Carbs: 1 g
Soluble sugars: 1 g
Total Fiber: 2.8 g
Energy: 108 Kcal

My take is that, since 11*9+1*4+1.2*4= about 108 Kcalories,
then the carbs which are not undigestible fiber are actually 1 gram as declared (in fact, they are labelled 'available carbs', which are in the form of soluble sugars and are the same, I guess, as 'net carbs').
In Italy it is rare to read a 'net carbs' label. Actually, I do not trust much commercial labels, so I always check with the official tables, unless there is no analysis on the specific product, then I'll proceed by inference, being cautious in my carbs count. Especially when the declared carbs content appears too low to be true!!

Nikki, I see that you are living in Naples, so you sure know what salamoia is. And maybe you read some net carbs labels which I missed.
The link on the official government tables is the following. 70% are original analyses, 30% are literature data on Italian products.

http://nut.entecra.it/646/tabelle_d...i_alimenti.html

Angelix I have never heard of it, but I have only lived here a year. I just read the labels on the products when I buy them. Do you know much about labels in Italy (the labels on the products)? In Canada I know they can round the grams down if they are less than 50% or something. I read somewhere that in some countries the fiber is included in the total carbs (Canada) but in other countries it is not, so I am curious if it is already deducted from carbs in Italy, if so I have been calculating my net carbs wrong! Not that it would be the end of the world as my rate of loss has still been good.

I think I just found the answer to my own question, and appears I have been lowballing my net carb count. This is actually good news for me because it means I am losing weight eating more carbs than I thought!

Carbohydrate by Subtraction

"In the United States carbohydrate is defined as “carbohydrate by subtraction”. This means that when a food is chemically analyzed in a lab, the grams of protein, fat, alcohol, water, and ash are subtracted from the total gram weight of the sample, and the amount left over is considered the carbohydrate value. Using this method, the carbohydrate value contains sugars, starch, and fiber, and may also contain small amounts of other compounds that do not fit specifically in one of the other assays. This carbohydrate definition is used in food composition tables and for nutrition labeling in the U.S. and Canada.

Available Carbohydrate

For nutrition labeling in the EU and Mexico, however, carbohydrate is defined as “available carbohydrate”, which does not include the fiber component. This value is determined by adding up the sugars and starches in the sample."

taken from http://www.esha.com/nutrition/how-c...rent-countries/

Thanks ... ill be buying the green ones now for the extra salt :-)

This seems to be also the procedure followed by the Italian official tables. It means digestible sugars+starches. Then the amount of simple sugars is specified. Then the amount of fibers (non-digestible).

I understand now all the discussions about net carbs. The method followed in the USA appears to be tricky indeed.

Yesterday, my curiosity stimulated by this thread, I looked at the olives labels in teh local supermarket.
Some packages displayed no nutritional content.
Some labels went as low as to show zero carbs or 0.1 %. Some showed 1 carbs. One specific glass jar of giant Greek green olives displayed 8.4% and that was the remarkable exception.

In my opinion, a reasonable estimate of net/available/digestible carbs in olives is 1%.
The exceptions may be simply measurement errors, or some very peculiar variety of olives which are particularly rich in sugars.
Olives produced in Italy should be all right, I'll try and go mroe in teh detail though.