(The New York Times News Service) - The majority of nutrition bars do not live up to their health claims, and many of their labels misstate the level of carbohydrates they contain, according to a testing organization.

ConsumerLab, the testing company, will release a report saying that 18 of the 30 nutrition bars it tested were improperly labeled. Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab, said many of the bars underreported the carbohydrates they contained.

The Food and Drug Administration has been investigating nutrition bars for a year and has sent letters to 18 companies complaining about the labeling practices.

In an interview, officials from Atkins Nutritionals, the maker of the Atkins Advantage nutrition bar, said it and a coalition of other companies had acceded to the government's demands and were in the process of devising new labels. An official from Atkins said new labels and reformulated nutrition bars would appear next year.

"We will be 100 percent clean and accurate on the nutrition facts panel," said Richard Hirsch, the senior vice president of brand development for Atkins Nutritionals.

FDA officials said the case was still open and the agency could not discuss its response to the proposal from Atkins and other companies.

Nutrition bars promise different benefits. Some are supposed to provide energy while others are diet, protein or "low carb" bars.

In the last year, bars that say they are low carb have been among the fastest growing segments of the $1.5 billion snack bar market. Atkins has sold $30 million worth of bars in the last 12 months, more than double its sales in the previous 12-month period. Richardson Labs, a division of Rexall Sundown, has sold $35 million worth of Carb Solutions bars over the last year, said Information Resources Inc., a market research firm.

But Cooperman said that 15 of the 30 nutritional bars his company tested had carbohydrate levels in excess of what their label claimed.

"Some people are relying on these bars for nutrition," he said. "They are getting a lot more carbohydrates than they expect."

Carb Solutions, a protein bar made by Richardson Labs, says that it is "for Low Carb Diets: and has "only 2 carbs!" In April the FDA sent warning letters saying that the bar was misbranded, adulterated and in violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

A spokesman for Rexall Sundown said executives familiar with the situation were not available to comment.

Many bars, including the Atkins Advantage, have footnotes to their nutrition labels that say they include polydextrose and glycerine, which are complex carbohydrate sweeteners, in their calorie count, but leave them out of their carbohydrate count.

Hirsch said calories from glycerine do not affect blood sugar levels, so consumers who are on low carbohydrate diets do not have to worry about avoiding them.

But Cooperman said that was inadequate.

"It is not good enough for the FDA, it is not good enough for consumers," he said. "We haven't come across evidence that those ingredients have a negligible impact on insulin or sugar levels."

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