Carbohydrates in chufas

When you look for the amount of carbohydrates on the packaging of chufas, you may think that chufa is rich in carbohydrates. We are sometimes told that too, what a sugary product chufa is. However, a caveat is in order:

Fibres!

If you look at the carbohydrate content on a package, that includes fibre these days. In the case of our chufa products, the content is:

• Chufas and Chufa meal
  61.70 grams of carbohydrates of which 15.50 grams of fibre
• Chufa meal Fine
  64.50 grams of carbohydrates of which 16.30 grams of fibre
• Chufa flour Extra Fine
  61.30 grams of carbohydrates of which 13.00 grams of fibre
• Peeled Chufas
  61.70g of carbohydrates of which 11.20g of fibre

Fibre is a carbohydrate that is not absorbed in the small intestine. Fibre provides 2 kcal per gram, other carbohydrates 4 kcal per gram. So the high carbohydrate content can be insidious if you don't look at the fibre content at the same time.

(most fibre is made absorbable in your large intestine, but there is also a portion that remains unabsorbable, the non-fermentable fibre and these give no kcal at all)

Dates, plantain and sweet potato

What about other carbohydrate-rich foods commonly eaten?

A difference can clearly be seen in the fibre content. Apart from the fact that fibre gives less kcal per gram, there is actually another property of fibre that is much more important:

Fibre makes you feel 'full'!

The satiety effect of fibre

A few glasses of apple juice is doable, eating a few apples whole is not easy. Eating fibre is a natural way of limiting your intake of food to the amount needed to nourish your body. This amount now becomes a 'portion'.

How many carbohydrates does a serving contain?

How many carbs are you really getting? As a portion, we calculated with a bowl of peeled chufas (50 grams), 2 Medjool dates, a sweet potato (easily 250 grams) and with a bit of plantain chips (200 grams).

Now the picture changes considerably... where the fibre content is about the same, the chufa suddenly turns out not to be such a crazy choice if you want to watch your sugars and carbohydrates.

If you consume the chufa in the form of horchata and make it yourself, consider doing something else with the fibre like baking a biscuit.

Sources nutritional values:
Nutritional value from our supplier, Google and fatsecret.co.uk