The late President Ronald Reagan was said to be fond of jelly beans. Maybe their wonderful sticky fruit flavor gave him the strength to tell Mr. Gorbachev to tear down that wall. Well now we can eat like Presidents without the worry of high blood glucose and tooth decay. Sugar Free Jelly Belly Jelly Beans are great sugar free snacks. Their packaging claims a forty percent reduction in calories over the traditional Jelly Belly jelly beans, but there’s no mention of the fact that they are every bit as delicious.
The jelly beans are actually somewhat smaller than the traditional jelly bean, but this was fine with us because it really gives you a chance to combine a lot of flavors without looking like a squirrel. Each bag contains an assortment of flavors including Buttered Popcorn, Cherry, Green Apple, Juicy Pear, Lemon, Licorice, Pineapple, Sizzling Cinnamon, Strawberry, and Tangerine. If you’ve always loved jelly beans like we have, then we give Sugar Free Jelly Belly Jelly Beans our highest recommendation.
Each serving of Sugar Free Jelly Belly Jelly Beans consists of 35 jelly beans. We can stop you right there. We can’t imagine that anyone will actually want to consume more than 35 jelly beans, especially since each serving contains 25 grams of sugar alcohol! You can’t blame them for wanting these beauties to taste authentic, but you also don’t want to spend the rest of the day in the bathroom. Each serving provides 80 calories, 8 grams of fiber, and about 17 grams of digestible carbohydrate. Sugar Free Jelly Belly Jelly Beans are sweetened with Splenda. Those with peanut allergies should avoid this sugar free snack.
How can they only be 80 calories when there are 37 g. of carbohydrates, which are 4 cal/g? You can’t factor out the fiber grams’ calories, and still claim the fiber. Also 8 g + 17 g of digestible fiber = 25 g. of carbs, not 37 g, so something doesn’t add up here. Please help me to understand. I am using a diet and fitness program that requires I enter everything I eat, and won’t accept values that don’t add up. Thank you. Roberta
Roberta,
We hear you loud and clear. When The Glucoholic became a diabetic this kind of thing was the reason he wanted to throw up his hands and quit almost every day. It took us forever to figure all this stuff out, but hang with us and we’ll try to get through it together.
Simply put, the “4 calories per carbohydrate gram” formula is correct – most of the time. There are a several types of carbohydrates that do not provide 4 calories per gram. In fact, some provide 0 calories per gram. These nasty little nonconformists are the root of our problem. It is entirely likely that the program you are using will not take into account these types of carbohydrates in favor of a simpler way to count calories.
To explain further, let’s talk specifically about the noncomformist carbohydrates in the Sugar Free Jelly Belly Jelly Beans. The fiber can be soluble or insoluble, and depending on what mix of each will provide anywhere from 0 to 3 calories per gram. There is also a healthy dose of sugar alcohol, including Maltitol and Maltitol Syrup. Sugar alcohols can contribute anywhere from 0 to 3 calories per gram as well.
The problem, we will quickly see, is that the manufacturer is not required to, and therefore does not provide, the actual gram mass of the sugar alcohols. This makes confirming the calorie count impossible, but it’s a safe bet that it is correct, as all this caloric information is standardized and regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. We can make a reasonable assessment of how they arrive at 80 calories per serving.
Their packaging claims the following:
Calories 80 Total Carbohydrates 37g Dietary Fiber 8g Sugar Alcohols 25gWe see right off the bat that there are 33 grams of these “exception carbs” by adding 8g of fiber and 25g of sugar alcohol. Subtract that number from the total and you get 4g of “regular carbs”. What we mean by regular is that they contain 4 calories per gram just like sugar would. This gives us 16 calories that we know for sure exist given our trusty formula.
Now’s when it gets a little tricky. Without being scientists with access to Jelly Belly lab studies, we can only say certain things. If we assume that the calories per serving is correct on the packaging, that means that these remaining “exception carbs” account for 64 calories. Since we don’t know the distribution, or what kind of fiber we’re dealing with, we can only calculate some ranges.
If every gram of fiber is soluble (the worst case scenario), then all 33 grams of the “exception carbs” contribute to the 64 calories. This produces an average of 1.94 calories/gram, which is certainly in the average range of calories/gram for these carbohydrates.
If every gram of fiber is insoluble (the best case scenario), then only 25 grams of the “exception carbs” contribute to the 64 calories. This produces an average of 2.56 calories/gram, which is even more believable since this is about what Maltitol is rated at.
We hope this helps. It might not help with the program you are on, but every little bit of knowledge helps. If there are chemists or nutritionists out there who might have additional input, please help us out!