:?: Anyone have any experience using the CarbSense Foods products? I bought the Zero Carb Baking mix and the Mini Carb Sweet Corn Muffin mix. I haven't made anything yet cuz I'm wondering if any of you out there in the Zone use any of these mixes. How about the various Atkins box mixes, are they any good? Thanks. Carole

I can't say I have, but Sears has put out cautions on many of the low-carb items flooding the markets right now. ( unlike Marie Antoinette, you can't have your cake and eat it too!) With low carb products, my rule of thumb is to look at the ingredients. If there are more that I don't recognize than the ones I do, I don't eat it. It's kind of frightening to see what combinations of weird chemicals they put together to turn out a "low carb twinkie' or what have you. (My current favorite is the low carb pseudo milk in the case near the Silk and organic eggs. The list looks longer than a chemistry experiment. Shudder.) However, low carb pasta that it made with soy flour and egg is tolerable for me. One of the few "low carb" grocery items I'll eat, occasionally. Basically, if Mother Nature a.k.a. God invented it, I am much more likely to eat it! :) Sorry to rant. Bring on the veggies! Ronica

No, Ronica, you're not ranting, you're making heaps o' sense! I don't think these mixes are *too* bad, but here are the ingredients in case anyone wants to comment: Zero Carb Baking Mix: Soy protein isolate (non-GMO), oat bran, wheat gluten, baking soda. This has 0 grams of net carb per serving, 1 gram fat, and 22 grams of protein. However, to use the mix, I still need to add other ingredients to make the final product, i.e., eggs, oil, milk or water or juice, fruit, or whatever. That makes it kinda tough to figure out all the Zone blocks. Mini Carb Sweet Corn Muffin Mix: Vital wheat gluten, corn bran, textured soy protein, almond flour, inulin corn, baking soda, xanthan gum, salt, sucralose (Splenda brand) This has 2 grams of net carb per serving, 2 grams fat, and 12 grams of protein. To make the corn muffins the directions say 2 large eggs, 1 cup water, 2/3 cup vegetable oil. Carole

Hi Carole, From those ingredients, I have a sneaking suspicion that the texture would be kind of weird and non-muffiny. Sounds like it would be sort of like gravel that was bound together with proteins. I can't imagine the mouthfeel would be what I would expect of a muffin. However, the German whole-rye breads that I love have no flour either, and are awesome, but really are more like a dense rye cake than a bread. I guess you'd have to try it. What do the nutrition lists say per serving for the mix? How many servings does one box make, and how much fruit, oil, egg, etc. do you add? We may be able to figure it out. Ronica

The box makes 12 2-ounce corn muffins. Each muffin has 12g protein, 2 net g of carb, 2g fat. You add 2 eggs, 1 C. water, 2/3 C vegetable oil. I would use egg substitute and probably olive oil. Geez, come to read the label, it says one muffin is 225 calories! :roll: Do you think I could substitute something like applesauce for part or most of the oil? I don't have any experience in substituting ingredients, I'm not really good at experimenting and I hate to waste the food since I'm kinda on a fixed budget ... and these mixes are not cheap! BTW, I made the chocolate cherry Zone muffins in the "Zone Meals" book and they were pretty good. I *did* have to do some changes cuz I didn't have chocolate whey powder so I had to figure out what to do. So that's why I'm amazed they came out okay! Carole

[quote:dcdd965596="carolejonas"]The box makes 12 2-ounce corn muffins. Each muffin has 12g protein, 2 net g of carb, 2g fat. You add 2 eggs, 1 C. water, 2/3 C vegetable oil. I would use egg substitute and probably olive oil. [/quote:dcdd965596] Hi, You might want to check into this further. It doesn't make sense that dividing the fat grams in 2/3 cup oil plus 2 eggs by 12 would result in 2 grams fat for each twelfth, especially when you consider that 1/3 teaspoon oil (one Zone fat block of olive oil)contains about 1.5g fat. Sue

[quote:25c222c147="carolejonas"]Do you think I could substitute something like applesauce for part or most of the oil? Carole[/quote:25c222c147] Carole, You are talking about two different components here. Apple sauce is carbs and oil is fat. If you added apple sauce then you would need to substitute for some other carb. Likewise the oil. Now I'm no cook and cant tell you whether this would work but just wanted to let you know that you were comparing oranges with horses, so to speak. cheers Top

[quote:d89688a41f="TopBoffin"][quote:d89688a41f="carolejonas"]Do you think I could substitute something like applesauce for part or most of the oil? Carole[/quote:d89688a41f] Carole, You are talking about two different components here. Apple sauce is carbs and oil is fat. If you added apple sauce then you would need to substitute for some other carb. Likewise the oil. Now I'm no cook and cant tell you whether this would work but just wanted to let you know that you were comparing oranges with horses, so to speak. cheers Top[/quote:d89688a41f] Hi, Comparing applesauce to oil, as far as nutrients goes, is like "comparing oranges with horses", but applesauce is usually a viable substitute for oil in muffins and such. Sounds like a good idea to try it. Of course it would alter the fat and carb makeup as Top mentioned. This would probably solve the problem of the huge amout of fat in the recipe. And as I alreay posted, the nutrition info, of 2g fat each, doesn't really makes sense when looking at the ingredients. Sue

Right, I know in many recipes fat (oil) can be substituted with applesauce or even pureed prunes. That is what I was thinking, so subbing applesauce for most of the oil would be okay, since the muffins are overloaded with protein and underloaded with carb if they are to be an acceptable Zone snack. I'll try to figure out the block count and adjust the oil accordingly. Gee this is a lot of trouble! If the Jiffy Corn Muffin mix recipe in the original Zone book was correct I wouldn't have to go through all this! :x Carole