Can You Survive A Day Eating Low-Carb?

(Not that you'd want to.)

People cut carbs for all kinds of reasons. But what TF does "low-carb" actually mean?

Feliks Tomasz Kończakowski / Via konczakowski.tumblr.com

Some people do it because they've heard it'll help them lose body fat, get swole, or avoid that mid-afternoon energy crash. (Btw, if you're curious about what carbs even are and what they do, you can learn all about them here.)

It turns out that there aren't really universally accepted, hard-and-fast numbers that define what it means to go low-carb for all people in all circumstances. After all, every body is different, and what could be just enough carbs for one person might be too few carbs for someone else.

BUT there are some numbers that experts and researchers use as benchmarks. For example, a 2015 study on carbohydrate restriction considered less than 130 grams of carbs a day to be a low-carb intake (the authors noted that this is also the American Diabetes Association's recommended daily carb minimum), and 20–50 grams per day to be a very low-carb intake.

So, the question is: Can you eat low-carb — 130 grams or less of carbs — for one day?

Take the quiz below to find out. Then try it again to see if you can pull off going very low-carb (less than 50 grams of carbs)!

All nutritional values have been taken from the US Department of Agriculture's Food Composition Databases, and from brand websites and product labels.