Mcd's grilled chicken ceasar salad

[angel6864]

OMG - I just had one of these for lunch and came home and looked up the nutritional info on it and it has 12g of carbs!!!!??? It has 3g of fiber so that's 9g net carbs, but STILL... i don't get it. That's with no dressing!!! How can that be??? Does anyone have an answer? Thanks! My breakdown for the day is already 55% fat, 35%p, and 9%carbs!!! Now I'm freaking out about I'm going to be over the 20g carbs for the day!! Help!

[Slapshot]

"How can that be???"

6g in the salad mix (probably was 2-3 cups of greens)
2g in the chicken
3g in the grape tomatoes
1g in the cheese

Don't sweat it. Just go drink a bunch of water to deal with the 890mg of sodium. Lesson learned - look before you leap when it comes to fast food.

[FwL]

Nobody is going to chop off your hands if you go over 20 grams of carbs. It's a number to shoot for IMO. A bigger concern is eating the right type of foods and avoiding as much junk as possible.

[not2late]

The carb breakdown is probably more like this:

salad mix: 2 grams
tomatoes: 3 grams
cheese : 1 gram
chicken: 6 grams

McDonald's USA - USA Core Menu Items by Ingredients

Grilled Chicken Breast Filet:
Chicken breast filets with rib meat, water, seasoning (salt, sugar, food starch-modified, maltodextrin, spices, dextrose, autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed [corn gluten, soy, wheat gluten] proteins, garlic powder, paprika, chicken fat, chicken broth, natural flavors (plant and animal source), caramel color, polysorbate 80, xanthan gum, onion powder, extractives of paprika), modified potato starch, and sodium phosphates.
CONTAINS: SOY AND WHEAT.
Prepared with Liquid Margarine: Liquid soybean oil, water, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils, salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, mono- and diglycerides, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservative), artificial flavor, citric acid, vitamin A palmitate, beta carotene (color).
CONTAINS: SOY LECITHIN.

The bolded ingredients are basically added sugars and starch, which would contribute to the carbs. The italized ingredients are spices and herbs that naturally contain carbs.

Just be aware of this in the future. Fast Foods, or any prepared or processed foods, often contain added sugars and starches in the most unusual places. I once read the nutritional ingredients to a box of 100% beef hamburger patties. Each patty had 7 total carbs, no fiber carbs. When I read the ingredients, the burgers contained soy flour and beef...no other type of animal protein, hence they could get away with labeling the burgers "100% beef"

Staying at or below 20 net carbs daily during your Induction is important because Dr. Atkins found that the majority of people can get into ketosis/lipolysis at that level of carbs. At this point, you really don't know what your Critical Carbohydrate Losing Level is. It could be 17 or it could be 50. But until you move to On-Going Weight Loss phase, you won't know for sure. So don't eat more than 20 net carbs per day during your Induction.