One thing I’ve just learned is how to read the word “Carbohydrates” in Chinese so I can read the nutritional panel in when browsing Asian grocery stores and supermarkets and can work out the carb count of groceries.
Carbohydrates or Carbs in Chinese characters is:
碳水化合物
The easiest way to spot it is it usually is the longest set of characters (5 characters) on the nutritional panel!
Here is what it looks like on a packet
A packet with both English and Chinese! The packet happens to be bread crumbs so of course the carb count is going to be high. The nutritional panel only shows per 100 g but as you can see the carbohydrate level is high at 72.9 g per 100 g. Definitely a no-no for keto.
There’s also another way of writing carbs on a nutritional panel in Chinese. Here it is:
The extra character at the beginning is the word “total”. This particular version is Traditional Chinese 總. In Simplified Chinese it’s 总 .
So the options for carbs are in Chinese are:
碳水化合物 or
總碳水化合物 or
总碳水化合物
Easy, right!? Now that I know what I’m looking for it’s easy for me but understand it’s going to be difficult for non Chinese background people. Just look for the item that has the most characters it’s most likely the one that reads “carbohydrates”. If you can’t tell Korean from Chinese or Japanese from Chinese, then I can’t really help you yet. Wait till I review what those options are before I give you tips on what to spot.
