OK, I've just now heard of the new scam, a variation, or outgrowth, of the IC/ NIC scam. This is the Net Carb Scam. Here's how this new scam came about. In the late 1990's, many nutritional supplement companies began to make low-carb candy bars. This splinter group remained outside the mainstream for many years, finally making its way into the money-making market. Hard core gym-goers are the ultimate in craziness; they read and study muscle magazines as if the information they contain is the Holy Grail. They spend hours every day micro-managing their diets and workout routines, trying anything to add an extra pound of muscle. I know this; I was one of these people many years ago.

Complicit in all this, the muscle magazine editors bow at the feet of modern science and medicine, assigning untrained writers to study the medical journals and come up with stories about state-of-the-art nutritional science. Because they aren't trained to read such technical articles, and because they don't have the background and perspective to analyze what they're reading, writers for these popular magazines become an enormous source of misinformation. And because the notions of the fitness, nutrition, and bodybuilding crowd permeate the cultural consciousness, the public has become totally confused because its "experts," writers for these rags, are not shy about promoting their ideas, fake as they are.

What drives all of this? Profits. All these groups know that they can easily get their hands into the pockets of most Americans.

Now, food bars without carbs taste pretty bad. So, the food chemists started loading them with carbohydrates that are called "sugar alcohols," carbs that are neither a sugar nor an alcohol. But, they are carbohydrates, nonetheless, even if they digest slowly and often contain a calorie or two less than a regular carb. The other thing that they don't do is "spike" glucose and insulin, although they do add glucose to the blood. I'm presently trying to uncover who dreamed up the nonsense that it's the "spike" that controls everything.

At this time, many companies are manufacturing low-carb food bars; they're all using sugar alcohols as sweeteners and claiming that, since they don't "spike" glucose or insulin, their carbs needn't be counted. As a consequence, the companies omitted the carb counts from the Nutrition Facts Box that's required by the FDA on all food items.

Well, the FDA wasn't pleased and ordered the companies to list all the carbs in the Nutrition Facts Box. They complied. But, they still sought a way to scam people into believing that these carbs didn't count. What did they come with? Net Carbs. This comprises the total carbs in the a food minus the fiber (legitimate) and minus any of the so-called non-impact carbs (illegitimate). But, most of these bars contain no fiber anyway. So, a bar containing 23 grams of carbs and 21 grams of sugar alcohols has, according to the marketer, only 2 Net Carb grams. How did the marketer convey this message? In another place on the bar he has placed a sort of "seal of approval" announcing the fabrication that the product contains only 2 Net Carbs.