Just wanted to put a quick note that the Cookies & Cream Keto Chow 2.0 is now available for ordering. Got it a few hours ago but I wanted to test it and make sure the viscosity was right before putting it up for sale.
OK, it’s the day you’ve all been waiting for – we now have Salted Caramel Keto Chow 2.0 in stock and ready for shipping (though still only in the week size – no samples yet). I didn’t want to put it up on the site until I tested the viscosity and it checks out =). With the arrival last night of Cookies & Cream, that brings the number of flavors we have of 2.0 up to three:
We did get a lot of Cookies & Cream and Salted Caramel but I didn’t anticipate how much demand there would be for Salted Caramel, being a new flavor without historical precedent – at least for Keto Chow. I have a new order for more already in the works, but I fully expect we will run out of Salted Caramel before we get the new order, so you’ve been warned =)
We also just got (yesterday) 20 oz. Hydro Flask insulated containers with the Keto Chow logo laser etched on one side. They’re available in 6 colors. If you’ve been reading my blog very long you’ll probably know that I’ve been advocating Hydro Flask insulated containers for years and now they’re available with a super cool Keto Chow logo laser etched on one side. Perfect for when you’re:
You need to either pre-refrigerate your Keto Chow for several hours or add in some ice cubes – in my experience, the Hydro Flasks will keep Keto Chow cold for at least 18 hours but the liquid needs to already be cold! The double wall vacuum insulation keeps hot drinks hot up to 6 hours and iced drinks cold up to 24 hours. 18/8 stainless steel won’t transfer flavors or odors to your next drink. This means your favorite beverage is always pure and refreshing.
The flip top lid should keep your gear nice and clean but please do make sure that you close the lid before you put it in your backpack.
I also took some new photos for the Blender Bottles, Fish Pills, and Base Powder while I was… photo-ing.
Now that Keto Chow 2.0 is available, I figured it was a good time to do a new video on how to prepare Keto Chow, specifically 2.0 now that there’s a scoop included. I also wanted to show off the cool shirt my wife bought me and the awesome scar on my left bicep I got when I attacked myself with a quadcopter a while ago =)
Now, the production quality isn’t the best and the circumstances were actually pretty bad. I did have a really nice microphone (that was hooked up to my cell phone, strangely enough) this time so the sound quality is considerably better, but I ran into a bunch of issues:
In case you were curious here is the stick blender I was using. It’s really expensive but works exceptionally well. For comparison, here’s one of my earlier videos back before I started doing Keto, I’m less of a man now =)
#strawberryselfie
We have strawberry flavored Keto Chow 2.0 available now. The 1.9 Strawberry had a pretty muted flavor that, frankly, I wasn’t really a big fan of – it needed more strawberry! With 2.0, the Strawberry actually tastes like strawberry.
We’ve had a lot of fun with Keto Chow 2.0 Samples. The short version of it is: the machine that was supposed to be making the samples isn’t working right and we’re having to manually package the samples until that gets resolved. You can read more about the issues on this previous post.
Last week we made the determination that we needed to do something to get a workable solution in place, especially since the supply of v1.9 samples is almost entirely gone – along with the old sample bundle. So I contacted the manufacturing facility and arranged to get part of the bulk powder that’s been waiting to be made into samples. For now, we’re going with simple zipper snack bags and a printed label – it’s kinda ghetto and costs significantly more to produce compared to the cooler packaging that they’re supposed to be in… but it’s a viable solution FOR NOW. I used the real barcodes on the ghetto labels so you will be able to scan them into Cron-o-Meter and other tracking apps, which is cool. It should be noted that we won’t be offering individual samples of the different flavors outside of the bundle yet, if you want to try Keto Chow 2.0 you’ll have to get all of them in the bundle. The only exception to this is Chocolate 2.0 – the manufacturer had a couple hundred samples so we have those for sale on the samples page.
Anyhow, the Sample Bundle for 2.0 is available – and we have a preponderance of black Blender Bottles so we’re back to packaging the sample bundle with a Keto Chow branded Blender Bottle. It’s everything you need to get started with Keto Chow! Fun fact: the vanilla sample is included in the bundle – we’re still a few weeks out on getting the fixed Vanilla 2.0 in large bags, so this bundle is currently the only way to get vanilla Keto Chow 2.0!
Artwork adapted from Hyperbole and a Half (her FAQ says I can use it so long as I have “Proper credit includes a prominent, easily visible link to the source of the material you want to use” – DONE! =)
My awesome wife reminded me that I hadn’t posted any “cool stuff” in a while – there’s a reason for that =) I blew through 8 days of vacation in a single pay period, it was fun (I should have grown a beard!).
Last week I spent 4 days at various “forest activities”: 3 days at 11 year-old boy scout camp with my oldest boy, then 1 day with both my boys at the annual “Father and Son’s” campout, both had no cellular signal – meaning no Internet, no NOTHING. Keto-wise the campouts were fairly easy: I just brought along Keto Chow for breakfast and lunch in a cooler, on Tuesday I actually had 5 meals packed in the cooler because we were going to be staying the night. When it was meal time, everybody would have to dig out the stoves and clean up after – I just grabbed a blender bottle and drank it. Cleanup involved rinsing the bottle out (and later running it through the dishwasher when I got home). Easy-peasy, nailed my macros effortlessly. Here’s a sperical photo of pitching tents (drag around the photo for fun):
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The week before that was spent with my wife’s family at Yellowstone National Park. We try to do a trip with them every year, even if it’s just for a day or so, and none of her family had ever been to Yellowstone. Instead of getting a bunch of hotel rooms in West Yellowstone, we opted to rent a house in Island Park and split the cost – ended up like $165 per person for the entire week. We had (really slow) Internet when we were at the house but nothing in the park. Again, I had Keto Chow, but I was using Hydroflask bottles so I wouldn’t need a big cooler, it worked exceptionally well! The photo below was taken at “Norris Geyser Basin” when we were eating lunch, everybody else had sandwiches – I had Chocolate Peanut Butter Keto Chow =)
So let’s talk about some cool stuff: Some of the podcasts I’ve been listening to. The one I just finished was the “Salt Fix” episode by 2 Keto Dudes. Really interesting stuff about salt – I’m going to grab the book and I already ordered some Redmond salt (which is coincidentally from Utah, but way South of where I live) – I got the coarse stuff because I want to use that with a salt grinder and for the “salt on the tongue” thing while fasting that Carl talked about in the episode. The mineral analysis for Redmond salt can be found here.
Fun anecdote about Redmond Salt. My dad knew a guy when he was in Texas/Arkansas who was from Redmond Utah, when people would ask the guy about his history he would report that he had saved up money by “working in the salt mine” – said it with a straight face too. The working conditions, even back then were actually descent but it sounded pretty ominous =)
I also have been catching up on the KetoVangelist Podcast – the “Low Carb Cruise” episode was pretty interesting, especially the story of the lady apologizing. I’ve seen that sort of thing myself and it’s frustrating to know I could help but don’t want to push people, it’s really something they need to WANT to change for themselves. How do you let people know you have a fix without being pushy? There’s the key I guess. Anyway, I don’t think I would need to work very hard to convince my wife to go on the May 2018 Low Carb cruise – except our kids would still be in school for another 2 weeks, that’d make it a little difficult =(
Anyway, the penultimate item is regarding KetoFest in July (not to be confused with Keto Con – which is in September). The “upper management” (myself and my wife) will be attending KetoFest – we’re not going as vendors or anything, just as regular people. If you’re going you should give us a fist-bump or something =) While we’re out of town, the same excellent people who kept everything running whilst we were in Yellowstone will be making sure orders go out and everything is dandy.
And finally, I’m playing around with a bunch of flavors for Keto Chow 2.1 – what flavors do YOU think would be best to bring out first? (you can vote for 2)
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Good news: Salted Caramel is back in stock and we finally have Vanilla available! Both are version 2.0.1 – I’ll get to the minor version bump in a bit.
Following the fun we had with Vanilla before, when we got today’s batch of Vanilla Keto Chow we pulled a bag from each lot and tested them to make sure the viscosity and flavor were correct – they passed! We did the same thing with the Salted Caramel (it’s standard procedure now). Anyhow, today was Vanilla and Caramel; tomorrow we are supposed to be replenishing Banana and Mocha with Chocolate coming Friday or Monday if all goes well. All are a smaller batch to tide us over until they can deliver the full order of 2.0.1.
Speaking of 2.0.1: It’s a relatively minor change, the only difference is a change in the amount of iron – previous versions of Keto Chow provided 100% of the RDI (18mg a day) if you did 3 meals of Keto Chow. This is the recommended amount for pre-menopausal women; but for post menopausal women, or for men, that amount is borderline high. 40mg a day is the short-term upper tolerable limit, but I didn’t want to be causing a slow build-up of iron in men (especially in myself =) if Keto Chow was used exclusively for all meals over months. The downside to this change is that many women will need to supplement their iron using something like this, this, or this in order to prevent anemia if they use Keto Chow exclusively for all their meals. An occasional meal with red meat will also work (and let’s be honest, you could really go for a rib-eye right now – amiright?). The new packaging notes this change, also the packaging is actually accurate now – no more “label correction” sticker!
If you are curious, you can read the entire Keto Chow changelog/version notes – going back to the very beginning with version 0.7 =)
We returned from Ketofest yesterday morning, very early yesterday morning, from Connecticut by way of New York City. There were the usual multiple hour delays, both coming and going – at least my traveling companion was enjoyable to be with =). We attended Ketofest just as regular people, rather than trying to be a vendor – which was a good thing as it let us learn from others. That said, it was impossible to miss us: the Keto Chow t-shirts were a bit obvious
The “Keto Food Pyramid” was something I put together a few months ago, planning to put it on the back of a shirt – but the project kinda died with all the problems we had with Keto Chow 2.0 production. Last week I decided it would be a good idea to have them for Ketofest, so I ordered 6 (3 for each of us) from Vistaprint and had them before the end of the week; though at $18 each (delivered) they’re not really viable for selling – we are working on having a couple hundred made with on a dark gray shirt instead of white. We got a lot of compliments on the pyramid and the shirts, it was a good conversation starter though I’m not sure how many people noticed that the base of the pyramid was Keto Chow =)
We did bring a bunch of chocolate Keto Chow samples – they were handy to have when we talked to people about what we do: “here’s my business card, and here’s a sample of Keto Chow – you mix it with heavy cream and it makes a complete meal.”
Anyhow – Ketofest. Friday we flew from Salt Lake to JFK (2 hour delay) and then drove to New London, CT. New London was right in the middle between New York and Boston, there were more flight at better times at JFK so we went with that. Fun fact about New London: even on a Friday night, EVERYTHING shuts down at 10 PM – this was a problem because we planned on grabbing some heavy cream on the way. Turns out there was a 24 hour Super Walmart just outside New London but we didn’t find that until Saturday morning. I mixed up some Keto Chow with water, stuck it in the fridge and we went to sleep. Next morning we grabbed some heavy cream, added it to the previously mixed Keto Chow and headed off to Ketofest.
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There were some issues with the registration bags (they were sorted by first name – oops!) but we got to meet a bunch of great people and it was surreal having everyone around already know what keto is!
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Ketofest consisted of 2 days: “Social Saturday” and “Science Sunday”. The majority of Saturday was cooking classes, eating fatty meat (a 250lb pig brought in and roasted by a local pig farm – I can imagine Carl calling the place: “yeah we want the fattest pig you have and when it’s cut up we want ALL the fat left on it, can you bring extra fat?”), and hanging out.
The cooking classes were in a “Maker Space” where you have a commercial kitchen, a wood shop, 3d printers, laser cutters and more (I would have LIVED in a place like that as a kid), it was REALLY hot in there until I plugged in the big fan and got a cross-breeze going. Richard was helping Brenda make her famous pork rind waffles:
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We hadn’t signed up to taste the waffles and it was standing room only, but I’ve made them myself so no big loss. They did have left over Smoked Salmon Asparagus Frittata that we got to try (my wife made more last night for dinner!). Fiorella’s Polenta Poppers were good enough that my wife made those last night for dinner too. We left before Richard started his “Pulled Beef 6-ways” where he was doing a speed-run of 6 different uses of frozen pulled beef:
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We headed off to the plaza to eat some roast pig
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While there we bought some keto bagels and then it was back to the cooking classes, they had some left over beef that was really good, and then we watched how to make some lemon cake (which was fantastic):
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Following that, we went on a Segway tour of New London, ate at Hot Rod’s (Cajun dry rub wings for me, prime rib for my wife and a pint jar of bacon for an appetizer). Then it was time for the movie at the Garde Theater:
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Ivor Cummings had secured permission for us to watch “The Widowmaker” – he’s been helping David Bobbett (the guy who funded the movie) get the word out. Powerful movie. After the movie I was walking behind a bunch of people who were talking about the science behind the coronary calcification test, they joined up with a bunch of people in the lobby talking science. I saw Dave Feldman so I went to say “Hi” but I didn’t want to interrupt the conversation. I’m glad I didn’t, I was standing in a circle comprised of a veritable cornucopia of doctors, scientists, and nutrition geeks – some of the biggest names in LCHF: Ivor Cummings, Jeffry Gerber, Dave Feldman, and some others that I don’t have the face matched up to the name =)
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I’m actually a bit sad that I didn’t record the conversation. It’s the sort of thing that should have been a panel discussion with everyone on stage.
The next morning we headed back to the Garde to bask in science. We got to talk to Dave Feldman again, he even posed for a “Keto Chow Group Shot” with his own blender bottle of Keto Chow =)
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The speakers were awesome, my wife got to meet Megan Ramos and I got to talk to her husband Angel (who was standing off to the side, eclipsed by the notoriety of Megan, but he’s doing some cool stuff in nutrition too!). There was some excellent food to be had and I would have loved to stay and see all the presentations but we had to drive back to New York and Google was saying it was a 2-3.5 hour drive (that’s a pretty large window!) ended up being about 2.75 – but don’t worry: the plane sat at the gate for an extra hour waiting for a fuel form!
I had 2 samples of Keto Chow left in my cargo pockets. The driver of the parking shuttle saw our Keto Chow shirts and asked us what that was about, said he was always having a hard time finding keto food he could eat that was easy and portable (ha, seriously?!). He got those last two samples =)
So if you were confused today and thought it was December 2016, I could have a potential explanation: December 2016 was when we were originally supposed to have the samples of Keto Chow 2.0 ready. Back then I was actually worried that the packaging was taking so long to get printed and didn’t want it to delay the launch. Had someone told me then that we wouldn’t actually get them until mid-August 2017 I might have given up =(
Today the wait is over! We now have the final finished Keto Chow 2.0.1 samples. Fun fact: even though some say 2.0 and some say 2.0.1, they’re all 2.0.2 (sunflower lecithin instead of soy lecithin). We got some of the flavors yesterday and the rest today, did some quality control to verify the viscosity, took some photos and now they’re ready to go! We also have the “Sample all the Things!” variety bundle in stock.
So what occasioned this rant? A new article published over on Vice.com: “We’re All Guinea Pigs in a Failed Decades-Long Diet Experiment“. The thought of a class action lawsuit against some company is tantalizing but are we also going to posthumously sue “Doctor”Ansel Keys and Senator George McGovern for their roles in all this? I’m going to move on and help as many people as I can. That’s why I make Keto Chow.
As a kid, one of the things I loved to eat more than anything was a bowl of melted cheese. Cut off a slab, microwave it and eat it with a fork. I didn’t do it very often.
Part of that was cheese was (and still is) rather expensive. The main reason was that I knew that it was full of fat and fat is bad for you. I would even microwave it a bit longer and drain off the oil that over-cooking the cheese would render out. Why did I know that fat was bad for you? The 1980 US Dietary Guidelines said so, my parents, my teachers, EVERYBODY said that it was bad. So it was. End of discussion, or so we though.
For almost 2 years now I have been living with new knowledge: that refined carbohydrates are the true cause of the obesity I’ve battled almost all of my life. Some people seem to handle sugar OK; I don’t. For these past two years, I’ve lived with a High Fat, Moderate Protein, Low Carbohydrate lifestyle. I’ve only “cheated” twice (January 2015 when I ate carbs before a weight loss competition, and I ate some breaded fish at a party in September 2015 and immediately regretted it). Knowing what I know about diet and nutrition now, and looking back at my life; I sometimes get angry. It passes when I think that at least my kids won’t have to deal with what I did, but I still get upset.
Along with the aforementioned cheese I also really, REALLY like bacon and sausage. Emphasis on the sausage. Before October 2014, eating sausage was an extremely guilty pleasure. Like when I hear Backstreet Boys and it reminds me of living in Chile back in 1997. When I cook sausage now it’s typically because we’re camping and I cook 2 pounds of it, plus another 3lbs or so of bacon and a couple dozen eggs. Granted: there are 8 of us, but the kids usually don’t have to ask “how many pieces can I have?” – they just get what they want. I didn’t put butter on anything before November 2014 because it was “bad”. When I think about sausage, sour cream, cream cheese, butter, guacamole and the other downright awesome fatty foods I didn’t use to eat: I get angry too.
When I think about Type 2 diabetes, which I thankfully did not develop before I started Keto, I’m filled with grief and a bit of rage.
I suspect everyone has someone they know, love, or respect DIE because of the effects of refined carbohydrates ravaging their bodies. Some people I’ve successfully helped transition to getting rid of sugar, flour, rice and other carbs and turning their lives around. Other people, I’ve tried to help but they didn’t want to make the change. They like bread too much, or candy, or pasta, or potatoes. I’ve never had bread that’s worth dying for (which is saying a lot, we grew up on homemade sourdough bread). Again, while I acknowledge that there are some people who can healthily have some refined carbohydrates, the level of sugar consumption we have attained in our diet is astounding. If Peter Attia can develop T2 diabetes doing Iron Man races, then do the rest of us have any hope?
Probably not unless we ignore the official dietary recommendations and do something else.
When I get an hour block I’m going to watch “Fixing Dad” about two UK film-makers who intervened in their father’s life when he was facing likely amputations due to his diabetes. There seems to be an over-emphasis on extreme exercise but the message about changing his diet looks promising.
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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