Keto Chow Preparation

We often drink Keto Chow warm, and also frequently use it in cooking and baking. Even the Savory Soups are meant to be consumed hot/warm.

Once Keto Chow reaches 120 degrees F and above, some of the nutrients may start to deteriorate. Even when it reaches that temperature, you will still receive excellent nutritional value. However, you would not want it to be your sole source of nutrition if you consistently heat it above 120 degrees.

All 21-meal bags of Keto Chow include a scoop for quick and easy measuring.

Depending on how you pack the scoop, it can come up short of a full serving by 2% or more. If you have a kitchen scale, we recommend using that for higher accuracy. This helps especially if you are tracking your food intake via Cron-O-Meter, MyFitnessPal, etc.

The shelf life of unopened Keto Chow is 2 years with no detectable change to the flavor or nutrition. You can read more about the accelerated shelf-life testing on our website. Each package has a “best by” date printed on the package that lets you know how long it will last.

The primary factor determining how long an opened bag of Keto Chow will last is humidity. If you live in an arid climate, you may have bags that are still fresh and tasty after 4-5 months. If you live in humidity, the powder may get clumpy and spoil after only a few days.

There are a few things you can do to combat the humidity:

• Use desiccant packets (the “DO NOT EAT” things you find in stuff)
• Store your bags in the freezer, not to keep them cold but because freezers tend to be crazy low humidity, and the cold doesn’t hurt either
• Get smaller bags or split up the large bag into smaller bags

MCT oil is cool stuff for a ketogenic diet. Your liver will convert it almost directly into ketones. This can give you an energy boost or more “keto clarity” – the enhanced mental state that accompanies deep ketosis. The extra ketones can also help get you into ketosis faster and potentially raise your tolerance for carbs. However, MCT oil does not directly help with weight loss. It’s more of an added bonus if you’re already in ketosis.

MCT oil can also cause…” the runs.” Take more than your body likes and you will spend a lot of time on the toilet. Starting a ketogenic diet can often mess with bowels anyway. Therefore, we do not recommend using MCT oil when starting Keto or Keto Chow, specifically. If you’ve been doing keto chow for a while then you can start incorporating MCT oil if you like. Most people can’t handle more than 40ml a day even after doing keto for years.

Versions prior to Keto Chow 1.9 had instructions to use MCT oil. You may still find traces of that on the blog and other locations.

Another issue with MCT oil is that it tends to cause problems with the lipid system (lipoproteins and triglycerides, etc.). This was actually one of the things that Chris tested in the 100 Days of Keto Chow experiment. When he introduced MCT oil, it lowered HDL (bad) and raised triglycerides (also bad). The full analysis of the experiment with graphs and data can be found here.

If you want to use MCT Oil (which is completely optional and not recommended if you’re just starting), you can use liquid oil or take capsules. However, the capsules are far more expensive.

Many people mix Keto Chow with heavy cream as the fat source. Heavy cream is comparatively low in lactose for the number of calories it contains. If you mix Keto Chow with 4oz of heavy cream, you’ll end up with 3.27g of lactose (roughly comparable to 2.4oz of whole milk). Many people who have problems with lactose are able to handle the relatively small amounts in Keto Chow without problems, or by using a lactase enzyme supplement. See this post for details.

If you want to eliminate heavy cream, there are options you can try. However, some will require a lot of calculations. I recommend using a tracking app like Cron-O-Meter to determine how the alternatives will impact your net carbs and other nutrients. Anyway, here are some possibilities you can try:

• Butter or clarified butter/ghee (using the mixing directions on this page)
• Coconut oil (using the mixing directions for butter above)
• Avocado oil
• Coconut cream
• A little MCT oil
• Avocados (blender required)
• One Keto Chow user uses 1/2 avocado, 1 tsp MCT oil, and 1 tsp olive oil per shake

If you want to eliminate dairy entirely, we do have several options for you here.

The best available option we have for this is the Keto Chow Base Powder. It contains all of the vitamins and minerals in Keto Chow minus the protein powder, flavor, and sweetener. This allows you to choose your own protein powder, and tailor it to your preferences. It also costs a lot less to ship since it’s 20% smaller than a 21-meal bag.