Some simple math will solve this dilemma. Take your daily calorie target and divide it by two. You can then use our How To Chow graphic. This will help you determine how much fat you need for half of your daily calories in one shake.
In order to get the best TASTE, we recommend you allow your Keto Chow shake to refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or preferably overnight. Allowing it to sit removes a harsh vitamin/metallic taste (30-45 minutes), and eliminates a lot of the saltiness (2-3 hours). As a result, you improve taste and texture.
Drinking immediately after mixing doesn’t hurt you, or cause you to lose health benefits.
In this case, all of the stuff is immediately dissolved, you CAN refrigerate it and reheat it later, or just drink it right away.
In May 2018, we removed Nickel and Boron from the vitamin/mineral formulation of Keto Chow. You’ll find this change on the Keto Chow Change Log where we publicly list what we’ve changed in each revision of Keto Chow.
Nickel and Boron both *might* be necessary for good health (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222322/#ddd00690), but there are no clear results that can be looked at for absolute certainty.
Why do Nickel and Boron remain on the ingredients list? There is still a chance people could get one of the old bags. We would rather lose a potential customer than expose the allergic to nickel, making them ill. We’ll list it on until ALL of the product we have on-hand has switched to version 2.1.2 or newer.
Currently, Mocha is the only flavor of Keto Chow with added caffeine (95mg). It also contains instant coffee powder and cocoa powder. In total, Mocha contains approximately 110mg of caffeine per serving.
Here is a breakdown of the other Keto Chow flavors that contain trace amounts of caffeine:
No other flavors of Keto Chow contain ingredients with caffeine (Chocolate Toffee does not contain any cocoa powder). Caramel Macchiato does not contain any coffee nor contains any caffeine, it only has flavoring.
Kids, along with pregnant/nursing mothers are a touchy subject. Speaking legally, children, pregnant, or breastfeeding women should not use Keto Chow. Is it still OK for those groups to use?
The Bair kids (along with many of the kids of our employees, friends, and customers) routinely drink Keto Chow. We find it a bit silly that many people think nothing of feeding their children Mac & Cheese, Doritos, or dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets slathered in sugary ketchup. Somehow, a product painstakingly engineered for nutrition is the one that’s suspect.
I give it to my kids. If you have any reservations at all, show the nutrition and ingredients to your doctor.
We have a short video that explains what fats you can use.
I actually did a 100-day experiment where I didn’t eat anything BUT Keto Chow and different kinds of fats. The short version is: I like to use butter the best, then heavy cream. You can also use avocado oil, a little MCT oil, even coconut oil if you mix it the same as butter.
So, based on all that, it’s entirely up to you!
It’s a bit of an involved subject, but here’s the short version.
We don’t recommend having a caloric deficit higher than 15% off your BMR. For example, if you need 1875 calories a day, you need at least 85% of that from food (1593 calories). If you go lower than that, you risk crashing your metabolism and going into starvation mode. This will stall ketosis, and it’s subsequent fat. Our bodies are smart and know to reduce output when faced with too large of a deficit.
If you dive deeper into the science of it, you’ll also run into issues of high fasting insulin that keeps fat cells from releasing energy, even with low glucose levels. Thus you end up with no glucose, no fat, and no ketones to run your cells and everything slows down.
First things first: there is some confusion between “Splenda” (that you buy at the grocery store) and pure sucralose. Splenda uses bulking agents so that you can “measure it like sugar” – typically this will be maltodextrin which is simply a carbohydrate and no good for a Ketogenic or low carb diet. The maltodextrin in store-bought Splenda will absolutely spike your blood sugar. Pure sucralose, on the other hand, will not. Even if it did have an effect on blood sugar, there is simply too little of it to have any effect. In Keto Chow, we use 0.08g per serving. To put that in perspective: that is 1/64 the weight of a US nickel. Even 0.08g of actual sugar will only raise your blood sugar by 0.32mg/dL – essentially no effect.
You may also find people snidely referencing to sucralose as “chlorinated sugar” – assuming that any form of chlorine is bad for humans. This would be ignoring Sodium Chloride (salt) and other chemical compounds that contain chlorine.
OK, back to the question of why we use sucralose for many of the sweet flavors of Keto Chow. The short answer is: because stevia doesn’t taste very good to the overwhelming majority of our taste testers. Ultimately, stevia, monk fruit, erythritol, or any other “natural sweeteners” are not magical and cause the same reactions in humans as anything else that’s sweet so why not use the best tasting option? We actually paid a 3rd party to do a blind taste test and they confirmed that Keto Chow with sucralose tastes “more natural” than products using Stevia, Erythritol, or Monk Fruit.
Allow me to quote Julie from the Sofa King Keto Facebook group – she illustrates why we use sucralose really well:
Holy what the hell. Go buy Keto Chow. It is NO joke. I am not a packaged foods kinda gal but needed something to get me back on the Keto track. I was thinking, honestly, “ok, I can choke this down for a couple weeks.” Um. NOT EVEN CLOSE. This shiz is delicious!!! And easy to make! Holy wow!
I bought both the peanut butter chocolate and the raspberry cheesecake. I blended 1/2 c heavy cream and 1/2 cup coconut milk with ice with a scoop of chow. Thick like a milkshake. No weird malt “slim fast” taste.
(Chris here) I personally use Keto Chow for at least 2 meals a day, often 3. Instead of something that I have to suffer through, I want something so delectable that I’m sad when I run out. It should taste so good that I swish it around in my mouth, enjoying the flavor; not plugging my nose and chugging it as fast as possible. And I won’t sell something that’s gross or barely tolerable. It’s gotta be delightful and that’s what you get with sucralose: the best flavor possible. A meal replacement that doesn’t taste AMAZING isn’t helpful in its intended use.
What about the rat studies showing changes in gut bacteria when exposed to sucralose? Humans are not rats. Those rats weren’t consuming acacia gum. Those rats weren’t on a ketogenic diet. Even more important, is the DOSE that the rats received. The dosage is usually expressed in mg/Kg or how many milligrams of sucralose were given per Kilogram of body weight. In the US, it was estimated (top of page 3) that most people consume 98mg of sucralose per day resulting in a dose of 1.6mg/Kg. In a recent study to determine the effects of sucralose, the rats were given an average of 80.4 mg/kg. Let’s see how that compares to what *you* would get by consuming Keto Chow:
The Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) level for sucralose was set at 5 mg/kg body weight per day (mg/kg/d) (page 10) in the US and 15 mg/kg/d in the EU. So you’d only be close to that using Keto Chow if you do it 3x a day and weigh 100lbs/45kg.
In a study published in May 2021, researchers exposed different bacteria to 3 artificial sweeteners (saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame) in Petri dishes (“in vitro”) and then measured their growth, how they formed colonies, and how effectively they can attack mammal intestinal cells. Of the 3 sweeteners tested, Keto Chow only uses pure sucralose. Saccharin modified bacterial growth and all 3 made it easier for the bacteria to form biofilms and to attack intestinal cells. Again, this was under laboratory conditions, not in living organisms – it also didn’t have the added benefits of acacia gum which are likely to erase all of the potential issues found.
One of the very interesting aspects of the study was the researchers also tested what would happen if a compound (zinc sulfate) that blocks sweet tastes was added. Adding this compound changed how the bacteria reacted, based on my reading of the study, that would indicate that it is sweetness causing many of the changes. If this is indeed the cause, that would likely indicate that ALL sweet substances would similarly affect the bacteria, including: stevia, monk fruit, sugar alcohols (like erythritol, allulose, xylitol, etc…), and regular plain sugar.
Unfortunately, the researchers stopped short of testing the logical next step which would be using “natural” sweeteners (including stevia, monk fruit, and actual sugar) as a control to contrast against, they only tested the 3 artificial sweeteners against no sweetener. Because there isn’t a legitimate control in the experiment, it’s currently not possible to derive any conclusions about whether artificial sweeteners cause substantially different results in humans compared to other sweet compounds. This is one of the reasons why it’s important that you not rely on the “news” version that’s been enhanced with incendiary headlines but actually read the full text of the published papers.
You CAN do it with just water or almond milk if you have a specific reason for doing that AND you are aware that not using fat will prevent the absorption of certain vitamins (A, D, K) and your Keto Chow will not be as filling, meaning it will just be a snack and not a meal. We generally only recommend doing this if you are doing something specific like a Protein Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF) and only for a short period of time. What we are trying to avoid is people not using fat because they still have the mentality that fat is bad and needs to be avoided. However, it’s not a good idea if you’re trying to do keto. Keto is a high-fat, moderate-protein, and low-carb nutrition plan. It is not low-fat, low-carb.
On keto, you need calories. We don’t recommend having more than a 15% calorie deficit while using Keto Chow. Water, almond milk, and other low-fat/low-calorie items won’t provide sufficient calories. Keto is all about living off fat.
Embrace the fat. Use heavy cream or avocado oil in your Keto Chow and put butter on your steak.
The only official statement we can legally give is the disclaimer at the bottom of the Keto Chow site:
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.
Take a printout of the nutrition and ingredients to your doctor and have a discussion with them. Not a “sit there and listen to them” but working together to determine what will work for you. To my knowledge, there’s nothing specific to Keto Chow that would be any more detrimental to mother or child than a typical keto diet. The real question to ask is the safety of a keto diet during your pregnancy/nursing. The internet is not the place to make that determination. The only issue we have heard reported is: don’t use MCT oil while nursing. Not that it is bad – it just tends to make babies mad. There are some amazing resources over on https://www.reddit.com/r/KetoBabies/
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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