Miriam bought me an ice cream maker for (mybirthday|fathersday) and it works really well to make Keto Chow into Ice cream. I decided to make a video showing just how easy it is! In this video, I’m using the Whynter ICM-200LS that has a built-in compressor so you don’t have to pre-freeze a bowl or anything.
We’ve had the four savory soup samples for some time that you could order individually but we were waiting to get the bags to make the bundles. Turns out they came 2 weeks ago and were put into the back corner without telling me. Oops!
The bundles for the savory soups are now available! It comes in a cool bag *AND* you save a whopping $1.25 over ordering the samples individually because we can make a bunch at the same time, efficiencies of scale and all that (which is also the reason you cannot customize what’s in the sample bundles). Anyhow, you can order them right now.
We just received the new packaging for the Base Powder with the new logo and the 2.5 version number. What’s changed? The package, that’s it.
Let’s talk about what the Base Powder is:
Ok, so why would you use the Base Powder instead of getting the full mix?
Now, the Base Powder isn’t for everyone – if you use it you should be prepared to do a fair amount of math to determine how much protein powder you should use since most protein powders vary on their nutrient profiles. If in doubt, use Cron-o-meter. The Base Powder is in the Cron-o-meter database already, then you’d just add your protein powder to a “recipe” (along with how much fat you’re using) and you’re good to go. The regular full mix is easier to use, especially for new users, but if you have the desire to customize a bit, you can check out the Base Powder
A note about the version number in the Base Powder: The Base Powder for 1.9, 2.0, 2.1, and now 2.5 are nearly identical. We’re even using the same UPC barcode! So, if you have some older Base Powder, don’t get worked up that you don’t have the “latest” version. Now the question arises: why did we keep 2.5 Base Powder nearly identical? With 1.9 we used off-the-shelf protein powder that usually comes with additional thickening agents, flavor, and other ingredients. With 2.0+, we’re using our own flavorings, protein, and sweetener so we needed some additional “stuff” (potassium and xanthan gum to be specific). For people using the Base Powder with their own protein powder, the experience is going to be identical to 1.9 so we kept the formulation the same. If we used the real base powder from 2.5, it would mix up too thick with most protein powders.
You can buy 2.5 Base Powder here.
On Saturday we hosted a Keto Meat-up and during the discussion about salt intake, an interesting bit of history was brought up by one of the attendees. He promised to find the source and today on Reddit posted what he was able to find in an article on Diet Doctor by Dr. Jason Fung:
Data from military archives going back to the war of 1812 show that soldiers and presumable the rest of Western society ate between 16 and 20 grams of salt per day. During the war of 1812, soldiers maintained a daily consumption of 18g/ day despite high cost. American prisoners of war complained bitterly that their 9 g/day of salt was ‘scanty and meager’. It was only after World War II, when refrigeration replaced salting as the primary means of preserving food that Americans lowered their average salt intake to 9g/ day where it has remained since. During that period pre-WWII, there was no concern of excess deaths from heart disease, stroke or kidney disease – the main things used to scare us into lowering our salt intake.
16-20g of salt a day, man – that would get most doctors in a tizzy! On the Keto Chow Facebook advertisement with the keto witch we often get comments about how that much salt is insane. The software we use to respond to emails, facebook, instagram, twitter, and live chat requests allows for the use of templates. Today I updated the template “salt content of Keto Chow” to:
Interestingly enough, the recommendation that people limit their salt intake isn’t based on good science – much like the recommendation to limit saturated fats and to limit dietary cholesterol. New data and studies show that the most likely problem you’ll encounter from salt consumption is too little salt! There’s a lot more data about all of this on these several sites:
- https://www.dietdoctor.com/the-truth-about-salt
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180809202057.htm
- https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)30467-6/fulltext
- https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/08/10/spoonful-salt-makes-blood-pressure-go-down-13289
- http://2ketodudes.com/show.aspx?episode=71
Above and beyond all of that, on a keto diet, you need a LOT of sodium. Failure to get sufficient salt will leave you with an electrolyte deficiency commonly referred to as “keto flu” – many people find they feel better supplementing above and beyond the sodium that Keto Chow has.
on a side-note I also have another template named “chow”:
The word “chow” to denote “food” (in this case, quite simply “Keto Food”) dates back to 1855 (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/chow). In 1894 the food company Purina started to use “chow” for its various animal foods (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purina_Mills) and “Dog Chow” was not introduced until 1957 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_Chow). The US Air Force and Marines use the term “Chow Hall” but I wasn’t able to find specific history on when that practice started, I’m assuming it was also before 1957.
Sometimes I also point out there’s a human food called “Chow Mein” – that’s only to the people that say “I would NEVER eat a food called ‘CHOW’!” Yes, I’m being petty and pedantic =)
Joe and Rachel of 2KrazyKetos recently finished up their 7 day Keto Chow challenge, it was really cool to watch their progress and experience. Every day they did a video showing the challenges they ran into, their epiphanies and more. I really recommend checking out their videos – if you want a good primer on how to do 3 meals of Keto Chow a day, this is one of the best places to start. Joe and Rachel do an amazing job explaining everything from an outsider’s perspective. Here’s the full “playlist” with their Keto Chow challenge videos so you can watch them all:
As promised, we are officially moved from our previous location in South Jordan, UT to a new location in Draper, UT. We actually started the move on Thursday, July 4 and will finish everything up tomorrow on July 6. The plan is we will have everything up and running for shipping on Monday with no interruption of service, looks like that will work out just fine. So remember: if you want to visit us in person, we’re now in Draper. Google Maps and Apple maps both have the new address.
Photos from today:
For any that forgot: we are closed on July 4th. So is the US Post Office, and UPS. We will not be shipping anything out tomorrow and it also doesn’t count as a transit day for delivery times.
If you have the opportunity, enjoy some time with your family. Around here we will be spending time with our family by all working together to get ready for our move to the new warehouse this weekend.
Image by SharpWriter – seriously, go check out his stuff
For any unaware, California has a fun citizen’s initiative commonly referred to as “Proposition 65” or “Prop 65” – it’s the reason many consumer products have a warning that “this product contains chemical known to cause cancer in California” (or similar) which is generally followed by everyone thinking “good thing I’m not in California!” I’ll not get into the validity of the “No Significant Risk Levels” and “Maximum Allowable Dose Levels” established as part of Prop 65, they are what they are, and if a company sells something to a resident of California, a California resident (usually a lawyer) has the ability to sue if there is not a warning and the product contains levels of heavy metals or other contaminants higher than the levels established. I can say that the heavy metal levels in Proposition 65 are low enough that coffee shops have had to post warnings and Disneyland has warnings in their picnic area.
Keto Chow was served a notice that “Safe Products for Californians” intends to sue Keto Chow for not having warnings that Keto Chow contains heavy metals, specifically lead. The tactic being that many of the levels defined by Proposition 65 are so absurdly low that quite literally EVERYTHING has enough lead to qualify for needing a warning. Also, since Keto Chow contains protein, and the ‘cool’ thing to do these days is use plant protein which tends to be from China and contains a lot of heavy metals, logically Keto Chow will contain heavy metals (like Soylent™ does). The thing is: we don’t use plant protein, instead we only use protein created by sustainable mobile bioreactors (ruminants); in fact, very few of the ingredients come from plants and the animals don’t absorb heavy metals.
Due to the lawsuit, we paid for an independent lab to test for heavy metals in Keto Chow, the complaint was only for “Lead and Lead Compounds” but we went ahead and had Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, and Mercury tested. The test has a minimum measurable level of 0.01 mg/kg of material, and each meal of Keto Chow is around 44-50g of powder. Here are the measured levels of heavy metals in Keto Chow, the serving size, and what your exposure is compared to the allowed levels with one caveat: the cadmium level is only established for inhalation, if you ingest it orally there is not established level.
Lead is interesting, Proposition 65 establishes a “No Significant Risk Levels” for causing cancer set at 0.015 mg or 15 micrograms per day. Lead also has a “Maximum Allowable Dose Levels” (MADL) for causing reproductive harm of 0.0005 mg or 0.5 micrograms per day. The MADL is set by looking at the level that no observable effect occurs and dividing that by 1000. In other words, if a toxin causes an effect at 10 units, the MADL would be defined at 0.01 units; meaning that the dose where lead will cause reproductive harm is 0.5 mg or 500 micrograms per day. I guess it’s surprising that many of the flavors of Keto Chow do NOT contain enough lead to require a warning label. Notably, the ones with the highest levels are those that contain spices or other plant-derived flavorings.
| Flavor | Arsenic mg/kg | Cadmium mg/kg | Lead mg/kg | Mercury mg/kg | Serving Size (g) |
| Banana | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 0.011 | < 0.01 | 44.434 |
| Chicken Soup | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 0.011 | < 0.01 | 45.449 |
| Chocolate | 0.015 | 0.031 | 0.014 | < 0.01 | 48.504 |
| Chocolate Mint | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 46.104 |
| Chocolate Toffee | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 0.012 | < 0.01 | 46.541 |
| Cookies & Cream | 0.014 | < 0.01 | 0.011 | < 0.01 | 44.504 |
| Egg Nog | 0.014 | < 0.01 | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 46.039 |
| Mocha | 0.014 | 0.023 | 0.023 | < 0.01 | 48.099 |
| Natural Strawberry | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 0.012 | < 0.01 | 44.824 |
| Orange Cream | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 0.012 | < 0.01 | 46.541 |
| Pumpkin Spice | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 46.679 |
| Raspberry Cheesecake | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 46.454 |
| Root Beer Float | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 0.013 | < 0.01 | 46.542 |
| Salted Caramel | 0.012 | < 0.01 | < 0.01 | < 0.01 | 44.804 |
| Snickerdoodle | 0.014 | < 0.01 | 0.026 | < 0.01 | 46.069 |
| Strawberry | 0.013 | < 0.01 | < 0.01 | < 0.01 | 44.604 |
| Vanilla | 0.010 | < 0.01 | 0.011 | < 0.01 | 44.654 |
If you eat a meal of keto chow your exposure (as defined for cancer risk by Proposition 65) will be:
| Flavor | Arsenic (mg) | Cadmium (mg) | Lead (mg) | Mercury (mg) |
| Banana | 0.00058 mg – 5.8% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00049 mg – 3.3% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Chicken Soup | 0.00059 mg – 5.9% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00050 mg – 3.3% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Chocolate | 0.00073 mg – 7.3% risk exposure | 0.0015 mg – 36.7% risk exposure (if inhaled) | 0.00068 mg – 4.5% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Chocolate Mint | 0.00060 mg – 6.0% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00060 mg – 4.0% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Chocolate Toffee | 0.00061 mg – 6.1% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00056 mg – 3.7% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Cookies & Cream | 0.00062 mg – 6.2% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00049 mg – 3.3% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Egg Nog | 0.00064 mg – 6.4% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00060 mg – 4.0% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Mocha | 0.00067 mg – 6.7% risk exposure | 0.0011 mg – 27% risk exposure (if inhaled) | 0.00111 mg – 7.4% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Natural Strawberry | 0.00058 mg – 5.8% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00054 mg – 3.6% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Orange Cream | 0.00061 mg – 6.1% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00056 mg – 3.7% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Pumpkin Spice | 0.00061 mg – 6.1% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00061 mg – 4.0% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Raspberry Cheesecake | 0.00060 mg – 6.0% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00060 mg – 4.0% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Root Beer Float | 0.00061 mg – 6.1% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00061 mg – 4.0% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Salted Caramel | 0.00054 mg – 5.4% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | Too low to be measured | Too low to be measured |
| Snickerdoodle | 0.00064 mg – 6.4% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | 0.00120 mg – 8.0% risk exposure | Too low to be measured |
| Strawberry | 0.00058 mg – 5.8% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | Too low to be measured | Too low to be measured |
| Vanilla | 0.00045 mg – 4.5% risk exposure | Too low to be measured | Too low to be measured | Too low to be measured |
Chocolate and Mocha both contain cocoa powder, a plant product, and both have the highest levels of heavy metals on the list; though the levels are still far below the very low bar set by Proposition 65 to necessitate a warning for cancer. The threshold for needing a “reproductive harm” warning is 0.00050 mg – as a precaution against future litigation we just went ahead and put the warning up for everything.
In September 2016, we moved Keto Chow out of the front 3 rooms of our house and into a 4000 square foot warehouse. At the time we thought “no way will we fill this space!” – here we are, 2.5 years later and getting ready to move to a 17090.92 square foot warehouse (that’s according to the measurements I took and using the definition of rentable space in the lease agreement, the actual lease agreement defines the space as 17535 square feet – after a lot of back and forth I think they don’t care about the square footage, they care about the lease rate per month, I let it go… mostly). There’s about 3x more space for storage at the new location on the floor without any pallet racking than there is at our current spot WITH racking. Once we have the racks installed at the new location we’ll be able to seriously amp up the number of orders we can process.
It’s also going to be nice to have a larger office. Right now Miriam’s “office” is a desk in the corner of the retail storefront, my “office” is a 6×7 storage room with artificial grass as carpet (the previous tenant was a batting company), Holly and Steve share a desk by the front door, it’s kinda nuts. We’ll actually have more finished office space with air conditioning than the entire current warehouse. That air conditioning will be nice when we do our Utah Keto Meat-Ups during the summer – the only problem will be that the meetup space is on the second floor and the landlord isn’t required to install an elevator because “Elevators are not required in facilities under three stories or with fewer than 3000 square feet per floor” so we have a contingency plan in place for helping people get up the stairs.
Anyhow, we’re targeting starting the move around July 1, 2019. The new location will have cool signs and stuff to make it easy to find but we won’t be on Redwood Road anymore so we’ll miss out on the incidental traffic that we get from “I was driving past and saw your sign that says ‘keto’ – what do you do here?” The new address is:
12577 South 265 West, Unit 4A (map)
Draper, UT 84020
I meant to add this to the “Flavor of the week” post earlier today but totally forgot at 6:30 in the morning. Wanted to wish everyone a happy Memorial Day. That’s my grandpa: LeRoy Bair, he served as a radio operator on a B-17 flying fortress in World War 2. Their plane was shot down (23rd of 25 missions!) and he was in a German POW camp for 11 months.
Did you know we have a military and first responder discount? I realized today that we haven’t ever publicly announced it, up until a few weeks ago it was available manually by request; a few weeks ago we added an automatic method to get the discount.
Keto Chow isn’t open or shipping today, not that it would matter if we were: as a federal holiday, all of the carriers are also closed. Monday holidays are always a lot of extra work on Tuesday!
The content of this website is not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medical advice. Use of recommendations is at the choice and risk of the reader. If you are on any medication, please consult with your family doctor before starting any new eating plan. Keto Chow is not intended to treat, cure or prevent any disease. Pregnant or breast feeding women should consult their health care professional before consuming.
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