Dana Carpender's Carb Gram Counter: Usable Carbs, Protein, and Calories - Plus Tips on Eating Low-Carb [Paperback]

Dana Carpender (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2004

This is the ultimate carbohydrate gram counter. Not only are total carbs and calories listed for each item on a comprehensive list of foods, but fiber, protein, and usable carbs are also listed for each, making this the most useful carb gram counter on the market. No other book is as comprehensive or as easy to use. Other value-added features include Dana?s advice on the best snacks, restaurant choices, fast-food meals, and more, plus the low-carb choices in each category are highlighted so they are easy to spot.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dana Carpender is the author of the national best-seller 500 Low-Carb Recipes, How I Gave Up My Low-Fat Diet and Lost 40 Pounds, and 15-Minute Low-Carb Recipes. She has been featured on Today and other television and radio programs as well as in newspapers nationwide.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Fair Winds Pr (January 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592330770
• ISBN-13: 978-1592330775
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #334,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dana Carpender is a nationally syndicated columnist and is the founder of Hold the Toast Press, which publishes the biweekly online newsletter Lowcarbezine! She is the author of multiple books on low-carb cooking including the bestseller 500 Low-Carb Recipes.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best Carb Counter I've found yet!, January 11, 2004

By 

Kelly Olexa "Kelly Olexa" (Carpentersville, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dana Carpender's Carb Gram Counter: Usable Carbs, Protein, and Calories - Plus Tips on Eating Low-Carb (Paperback)

If you are on any type of Lo-carb plan, you've got to get this book. Perfect small size but far more thorough than anything. She has even added the fast food menu items made lo-carb; for example if you order a sandwich at Wendy's and remove the ketchup and bread, how many calories, fat grams and carbs are left...this is fantastic for those of us that still like to know or have an idea on general calories we are consuming. I have the small carb counter that came w/the new Atkins book and that's fine, but this will replace it and stay in my purse. Highly recommend this!

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars inconsistent reporting makes values hard to compare, April 15, 2004

By 

"songsrus" (Champaign, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dana Carpender's Carb Gram Counter: Usable Carbs, Protein, and Calories - Plus Tips on Eating Low-Carb (Paperback)

I have Carpender's 500 Low Carb Recipes, and 15 minute Low Carb recipes, like those books a lot and use them often. Finding those books to be an inspiration to my own low carb creativity, I bought this book to help me determine the carb values of my own recipes, in which I use a lot of the same ingredients Carpender uses but in varying mixtures. I particularly thought that the entries in her own carb counter book would harmonize well with the types of ingredients she often uses, such as varieties of nuts substituted for flour. I also hoped to find extensive information on vegetables, since they are the key variable factors in low carb counting.

This book doesn't well match some of the key ingredients in her own recipes, however. 1 oz., 1/2 cup, 1 small, medium, raw, roasted/salted, cooked, whole, ground, --- the entries are not wide enough to match up to many of the common forms of ingredients used in low carb home cooking. Just when I wanted to know the carb count of some raw veggie, all that could be found was some amount or form that didn't at all match with what I had available. (One of the funniest entries is for potatoes, which I rarely use whole, using mostly only the skins--not listed--but notice: there is info for a whole pound, for hash browns, for homemade potato salad [what recipe was that anyway?], but no value for a 3 oz. plain whole potato.)

I don't need to know the info for prepackaged items, since in the United States, that is readily and more easily found on the package. And I don't eat often in restaurants.

I am still looking for a good carb counter for home cooking. So far I find the Eades (Protein Power authors), The Protein Power Lifeplan Gram Counter to be superior to this book. In addition to carb counts the Eads book lists Omega 6 & 3 values, and has special, easily found, pages on particularly desirable foods (such as high vitamin C, magnesium, E, and biggest bang for the buck foods), whereas Carpender either doesn't mention things like vitamins, and disperses the lowest carb foods throughout the whole book, burying them in each entry. This is a matter of preference, but I find Carpender's information just to hard to find, especially in the moment when I am standing in the kitchen wondering about a particular substitute for a recipe I am poised to make right then.

Carpender seems like a nice gal, and certainly has lots of spunk, but I feel that this book may have been written too hastily at best. I'm sorry I bought it, though it is pretty funny in places, but not where I think it is supposed to entertain.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars She's a great low-carb writer but..., February 3, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Dana Carpender's Carb Gram Counter: Usable Carbs, Protein, and Calories - Plus Tips on Eating Low-Carb (Paperback)

I simply love Dana's "How I gave up my low-fat diet" book, her e-newsletter and her low carb cookbooks so when I saw this book, I bought it immediately, but now I wish I had thumbed through it first. The organization (or lack there of) makes it very difficult to use. There is no index, the table of contents is the only way to locate foods and that isn't set up in any sensical way. I am always frustrated while trying to find things. The small size is convenient for eating out, if you can find what you are looking for, and the information is complete and includes usable carbs, which my atkins book does not.