Low carb dieting has lead towards food choices that alternate between “oooh, that looks healthy” and “why are you doing that to yourself?” My lunches have been a salad topped with chicken and hardboiled egg topped with bleu cheese dressing. That last part is responsible for 40% of the calories in the salad so I figure I’d swap it out for balsamic vinegar and give myself a margin to down extra pepperoni later in the day. I ate my lunch gingerly, knowing that I had reduced my consumption that day by 15%. This energy faded when I logged my lunch in my calorie tracker and found that the two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar had contributed 6.8g of net carbohydrates against my daily allotment of 20g. How could ascetic acid with a few flavoring agents possibly be so high in carbohydrates? Because balsamic vinegar isn’t a traditional vinegar. It’s a grape reduction that turns out to be quite sweet that is then soured to give it the vinegar-y taste.

I had gotten quite good at rotating jars to check their carb content but now found a new Brutus waiting to slay me.