It’s a classic match-up: when people get high cholesterol, the typical advice is to “reduce ‘unhealthy‘ saturated fats like Butter with ‘healthy‘ fats like Extra Virgin Olive Oil” – so what would happen if you could perform an experiment where a person ONLY changed what fat they were consuming as the lone variable? Would butter be healthier or EVOO?
In December of 2018 I (Chris Bair), decided to do an experiment where I would eat only Keto Chow for all of my food: 3 meals a day, roughly 300 meals during the course of the 100 days beginning January 2, 2019. Surprisingly, another Keto Chow user volunteered to also do the experiment, providing the opportunity to turn the N=1 into a N=2. This is interesting because I’m a rather tall male, our volunteer, Beverly, is a shorter female with an energy requirement approximately 1000 kCal/day lower than mine.
This experiment was an attempt to prove longer-term viability of Keto Chow being used for a sole source of nutrition. Additionally, it was an opportunity to further validate the effects of different types of fats on blood markers and test some new fats, primarily butter.
My previous experiment where all of my calories for 4 weeks came via Keto Chow brought out some interesting data in my 3rd week. That week I changed my fat source from heavy cream over to avocado oil, this resulted in some remarkable blood tests. A question arises as to whether my elevated Triglycerides, lowered LDL, Lowered HDL, and more are a result of the reduced carbohydrates (under 2g net a day average), or the composition of the fats I was eating: Saturated vs. Monounsaturated, vs. Polyunsaturated. This experiment intends to answer that question by isolating the fatty acids as the only variable.
My previous experiment where all of my calories for 4 weeks came via Keto Chow brought out some interesting data in my 3rd week. That week I changed my fat source from heavy cream over to avocado oil, this resulted in some remarkable blood tests. A question arises as to whether my elevated triglycerides, lowered LDL, lowered HDL, and more oddities are a result of the reduced carbohydrates (under 2g net a day average), or the composition of the fats I was eating: Saturated vs. Monounsaturated, vs. Polyunsaturated.
October 20, 2017, I (Chris Bair, that’s me) started an experiment on myself to see what would happen if I ate only Keto Chow for 4 weeks while getting weekly blood tests to monitor my health and what was going on in my body. I also wanted to verify the readiness of a change to the recipe, fit two experiments into one.
Quite some time ago I tested Keto Chow 1.5 and how it effects (my) blood glucose levels. Time to run the experiment again! This time I didn’t forget to not eat so I started with a clean sample. My first meal was at 11 am, with my previous meal 17 hours earlier at 6 pm (18:00).
On on /r/keto /u/rhoymand has done a series on testing his blood sugar response to various foods (here is one on a Quest Bar). I’ve been curious what effect Keto Chow has on blood so I got a glucose meter (cheap as free!) and some test strips (holy cow, these are expensive!).
