I bought this drink, a Body Armor Lyte, and on the nutrition label, it says the drink contains 18g of carbohydrates but the whole bottle only has 20 calories.
I was under the impression that 1g of carbohydrates is equal to 4 calories. It says this on a lot of food nutrition labels (also says protein = 4 cals and fat = 9, maybe this rings a bell).
So how is this possible?
There’s a whole host of soluble and insoluble undigestable fibers, polysaccharides, sugar alcohols and the like which are by definition carbohydrates, but since they are undigested by your gut and are fermented in you colon do not provide any calories for you. They do so for the gut flora.