The answer to this option depends on the country you live in. The Macros app gets the nutritional information of the foods available in the public library from the nutrition facts labels. Some countries show by default the net carbs while others show the total carbs.
If you live in a country that shows net carbs on the nutrition facts labels, you are already counting net carbs. If you live in a country where total carbs are displayed, then it is needed to subtract the fiber to get the net carbs, the app has an option to do this automatically, follow these steps to enable it:
- Open the settings of the app (the gear icon)
- Go to the “Advanced” section
- Enable the option “Calculate net carbs“
- Now the app will automatically subtract the fiber from the carbs of all products to display the net carbs
You are not sure if you should enable this option? Generally, in the USA and Canada the total carbs are displayed, so you need to enable the net carbs calculation to count for net carbs.
If you live in Europe, the net carbs are generally shown by default, so no calculation is needed (it would be incorrect to calculate it again since you would be subtracting the fiber twice).
You can quickly check if the country where you live uses the net carbs by default or not by looking at the nutrition facts label of any product that has fiber. If the fiber is displayed as part of the carbs like in this example:
The total carbs are shown so you would need to subtract the fiber to get the net carbs. In this case, you would need to use the “Calculate net carbs” option to count for net carbs.
On the other hand, if the fiber is already displayed as a separate nutrient from the carbs like in this example:
The net carbs are shown (the fiber has already been subtracted, that’s why it is displayed as separate nutrition from the carbs). In this case, you should not use the “Calculate net carbs” option because you are already counting net carbs.
