Low-carb products: it’s not just about cutting carbs, but also about what you replace them with
When choosing a low-carb product, the first piece of information you look at is almost always the carbohydrate content. It’s understandable, because if your goal is to reduce your intake, that number has significant weight in your decision. However, on its own, it only tells part of the story. Two products can report similar nutritional values while having completely different formulations behind them, built with very different ingredients, production processes, and criteria.
It is from this consideration that one of the principles guiding OVER was born: in low-carb, it’s not just about taking out carbohydrates, it’s also about what you put in their place.
Reducing carbohydrates in a food product drastically does not simply mean eliminating flour, starch, or sugar and replacing them with something else. In traditional products, these ingredients perform many functions: they contribute to structure, softness, friability, leavening, color, shelf life, and final texture. When they are significantly reduced, that balance must be rebuilt with other raw materials and through much more careful work on the formulation.
It’s not a question of few or many ingredients
In recent years, the idea that a very short ingredient list is necessarily synonymous with quality has spread. In reality, this criterion, taken alone, is rather weak, and in the low-carb sector, it is even more so. A product with few ingredients is not automatically better, just as a more complex formulation is not necessarily worse.
What really counts is understanding the role of the main ingredients.
In our case, resistant starches, wheat proteins, inulin, and other dietary fibers are not elements added to complicate the recipe, but constitute the very structure of the product. If we want to obtain a pasta with very few carbohydrates that can be boiled, drained, dressed, and eaten like a normal first course, we must reconstruct a good portion of the functions that are performed by semolina and starch in traditional pasta.
For this reason, we use a combination of resistant tapioca starch, vital gluten, wheat fiber, and a limited amount of inulin, reaching 3.9 grams of carbohydrates per 100 grams without sacrificing cooking stability and structure.
Our goal, therefore, is not to have the shortest ingredient list possible, but a formulation consistent with the result we want to achieve.
The real difficulty begins with baked goods
This complexity increases further when moving on to bread, focaccia, cookies, or leavened products. A bread must remain soft and pleasant to the bite, a focaccia must have structure without being gummy, a croissant must be fluffy but not fragile, a cookie must have the right friability, and a pizza base must be able to support the toppings and a second bake.
With a traditional formulation rich in flour and starches, many of these characteristics are obtained relatively naturally. When the carbohydrate content is reduced drastically, however, the recipe becomes much more delicate. One must work on the ratio of proteins to fibers, on hydration, fats, mixing times, leavening, and baking temperatures. Even seemingly minor variations can significantly change the final result.
There are, of course, different ways to address these problems. One path is to rely more heavily on emulsifiers, stabilizers, humectants, preservatives, improvers, and other ingredients with a predominantly technological function. Another is to try to obtain a greater part of the result through the formulation and the production process.
It is this second path that we try to follow whenever it is technically possible.
Not because additives are automatically something negative. That would be a superficial and scientifically unserious position. Many food additives are authorized and perform precise functions. The point, for us, is another: if a certain characteristic can be obtained by working better on the recipe, we prefer to try that path before adding an additional technological ingredient.
We are not against food technology
This is an important point, because it would be easy to turn the discussion into an artificial opposition between “natural” and “chemical.” That is not our approach.
When needed, we use sweeteners and leavening agents. When we need to build a specific aromatic profile, we use specific ingredients, such as vanillin and essential orange oil. We are not interested in assigning a positive or negative value to an ingredient based on whether its name sounds more or less familiar; we are interested in whether it performs a real function in the product.
Food technology, for us, is not something to be rejected. It is a tool. The difference lies in the way it is used and the degree to which it becomes necessary to make a formulation work.
There are many more trials behind a formulation than one might imagine
In practice, this means doing many tests and accepting that a recipe may require numerous adjustments before reaching the desired result. You modify the hydration, change the ratio between fibers, try a different combination of proteins, intervene on the amount of fat, observe how the dough reacts during leavening, and correct baking times and temperatures.
Sometimes a variation improves softness but worsens the taste; in other cases, a fiber makes the product more stable but less pleasant to the bite. An ingredient that works well in a cookie may behave in a completely different way in a leavened product.
It is work made of trials, errors, and corrections, but it is precisely in this process that a low-carb product is truly built.
When the recipe requires it, we use food ingredients like butter, eggs, extra virgin olive oil, yeast, hazelnuts, cocoa, seeds, and spices. This does not mean that a low-carb product should be formulated like a traditional product, because that would be impossible; it means, rather, trying to maintain a clear logic, in which every component truly contributes to the result.
Preservation is also part of quality
One of the most delicate themes is that of shelf life. A food must not only be good at the moment it is produced: it must reach the consumer in correct conditions, maintain satisfactory organoleptic characteristics, and be safe for the entire expected duration.
For this reason, preservation cannot be ignored, but it can be approached in different ways. Our choice, when possible, is to try to intervene also on the packaging and on the environment surrounding the product, instead of entrusting all shelf life to the presence of substances added directly into the formulation.
In some of our fresh products, we use ethyl alcohol to support preservation. Alcohol helps combat the development of mold and can allow for limiting the use of other preservatives directly in the dough. We declare this without issue, because it is simply a technical solution consistent with our way of working. Once the package is opened, it tends to evaporate progressively, and for some products, we actually recommend letting them breathe for a few minutes before consumption.
In some pizza bases, we instead use iron-based oxygen absorbers, inserted inside the package and separated from the food. Their function is to reduce the amount of oxygen present in the inner space of the package, contributing to limiting oxidative phenomena and creating conditions less favorable to the development of certain microorganisms.
The principle, in both cases, is the same: when we can improve preservation by intervening on the treatment or the packaging environment, we prefer to evaluate this possibility before modifying the recipe further.
Artisan does not mean giving up science
The term “artisan” can also be misunderstood. For us, it does not mean producing without technology or without scientific knowledge, but exactly the opposite: it means knowing the behavior of ingredients well and using them with greater attention.
One must understand how a fiber interacts with water, how a dough changes by modifying a protein, how a resistant starch reacts to cooking, how leavening varies when a significant part of the traditional flour is no longer there, and how texture and softness change during storage.
This technical work is an integral part of the product's quality.
This is why carbohydrates don't tell the whole story
When we purchase a low-carb product, it is correct to start from the nutritional table, but stopping there means missing an important part of the information. After checking the carbohydrate content, it is worth reading the ingredient list as well and observing how the product was built.
What are the main ingredients? Which fibers are used? Which proteins? Which fats? Which sweeteners? Are there ingredients with a structural function, or substances used mainly to facilitate preservation and processing?
You don't need to become a food technologist to make this assessment. Just start reading labels more consciously.
Two cookies can have the same amount of carbohydrates and be formulated in a completely different way. The same goes for two breads, two pizza bases, or two croissants. The nutritional table tells us how much of certain substances there is; the ingredient list, on the other hand, begins to tell us how the product was built.
Our recipes continue to evolve
One of the principles we try to maintain at OVER is never to consider a formulation definitively closed just because it works.
If we find a better raw material, we test it. If we manage to eliminate an ingredient without making the product worse, we evaluate it. If a change allows for improving texture, flavor, or shelf life without unnecessarily complicating the recipe, we try to introduce it.
This also means accepting that not all tests go in the direction hoped for. A theoretically interesting solution may work poorly in production, a fiber may give excellent results in one category and terrible ones in another, or a change may improve the product just out of the oven but worsen its quality after a few days.
For us, developing a low-carb product therefore does not simply mean subtracting carbohydrates from an existing recipe. It means, much more often, reconstructing the food by looking for a new balance between taste, structure, nutritional values, workability, and preservation.
We are not looking for the shortest label, but the most sensible formulation
This is probably the simplest way to summarize our philosophy.
We don't want to win a race for who uses the fewest ingredients. With products so low in carbohydrates, that would also be an unrealistic goal. What we are looking for is a formulation in which every component has a precise reason.
We use resistant starches to contribute to the structure while keeping the content of available carbohydrates very low; we use proteins and fibers because they are an essential part of the product's architecture; we use butter, extra virgin olive oil, eggs, hazelnuts, cocoa, and other food ingredients when they are the ones most suited to the recipe; we use sweeteners when we need to achieve sweetness without resorting to the amounts of sugar typical of traditional products; we use vanillin and essential orange oil when we want to build a specific aromatic profile.
When we have to face the problem of preservation, we also try to work, where possible, on the treatment of the product and on the packaging.
It is an approach that does not always make the work easier. On the contrary, it often involves more trials, more sensitive formulations, and smaller margins for error.
But it is the path we have chosen.
Because our goal is not simply to produce foods with few carbohydrates. It is to try to produce good foods with few carbohydrates.
When you choose a low-carb product, then, definitely look at how many carbohydrates it contains, but try also to go a bit further. Read the recipe, observe what flour, starches, and sugar have been replaced with, and try to understand what function the present ingredients perform.
There is no need to be afraid of a name we don't know. We need to understand why that ingredient was used.
This is the principle with which we try to develop OVER products:
in low-carb, it’s not just about taking out carbohydrates. It’s also about what you put in their place.