Monthly Archives: August 2015

Minor Recipe changes now LIVE: Keto Chow 1.0.4

This entry is part 91 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I did a small number of changes to the recipe for Keto Chow:

  • The LIQUID part of the coconut oil was causing confusion. I’m removing it in favor of just MCT.
  • MK-4 pills have been replaced with MK-7, you still open up one for each day (7 for a week) and add it when mixing together the powder as I do with the pre-mixed Keto Chow.
  • I’m now grinding the vitamin pills with a blender. The 1.53g is how much 1 pill weighs. You can grind yours up and add it to the mixture like I do or you can just take one pill per day.

I’ve also updated the preparation instructions accordingly. Nothing ground breaking or really super notable but hey, it’s changes so now the recipe is 1.0.4

By |2016-10-13T07:28:03-06:00August 31st, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent|3 Comments
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Mixing for two

This entry is part 90 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Since my wife switched from “Whole30” to keto I’ve been burning through blender bottles much quicker. We finished the last round this morning so I mixed up some chocolate fudge using all of the blender bottles that weren’t in the dishwasher. Took about 20 minutes, ended up with 10 of them. That won’t even last 2 days! First world problems I guess.

By |2015-08-30T11:31:04-06:00August 30th, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent|3 Comments
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Finished testing changes to Keto Chow recipe

This entry is part 89 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Today marks beginning of an end: all of the Keto Chow I mix from here on out (and actually going back a few days) has the vitamins included in the mixture. No more emailing me because I forgot to put them in the bag. No more questions about if people can use vitamin Y instead of the Kirkland ones =). And less hassle for everyone. For a few people that have special dietary needs (such as an allergy to Niacin or need to limit iron), this will unfortunately cause problems since the vitamins can’t be removed. Sorry about that =( My recommendation if you fall into that category is to follow the recipe and mix your own version of Keto Chow. Speaking of the recipe, for now it’s not going to change since the only modification was grinding up the vitamins with a blender (yes it does blend, but you need to put in a few weeks worth at a time and no more than half a bottle).

For everyone else: the first few orders with integrated vitamins shipped out this morning and within a week or so almost all of the week packs and many of the day packs will be moved over to the new formulation. You’ll be able to tell by the different label, no longer does it say to take one pill per day; rather it says the pudding is in the mix the vitamins are in the mix. And to make it easier for everyone during the transition, I’m sticking a little yellow sticker on them with the same info. It’s kinda hard to miss =)

In other news, I had to abandon my tests on adding additional Magnesium to the mix. The magnesium I tried was adding an unpleasant metallic taste to the mix. Many of the testers couldn’t taste it but I certainly could and didn’t like it at all. Pro tip: when experimenting, don’t change more than one variable at a time (adding vitamin powder plus magnesium) because you won’t be able to tell which one is causing an unwanted result. The end result of all of this is I’m going to keep the magnesium level where it’s at. It’s sufficient for most people and for the weirdos out there (like me) that get occasional muscle cramps because they need more magnesium I’d recommend using a magnesium supplement. Personally I’m using this one. Currently it’s $17.46 for 360 tablets, I’m taking 2 of them which adds 850mg of magnesium. In a few weeks I’ll probably try cutting back to 1 and see if that’s sufficient for me.

There is one more possible change: I just bought 1000g of Vitamin K7 powder. It works out to be 1g = 10 pills of the NOW stuff that I’m currently using (1,000 μg/g). I’m pretty stoked with the prospect of NOT having to open up 100 bottles of 100 pills and getting the powder out. If this does work out there’s going to be a departure in the DIY recipe vs the recipe I mix up since it’s pretty hard to get a hold of this powder unless you’re willing to spend really a lot of money (let’s put it this way, I’m not saving very much by doing it this way, it’s mostly convenience). So the DIY recipe will remain with the NOW capsules and I’ll be using the stuff from aidp.com

By |2016-10-13T07:28:05-06:00August 28th, 2015|Soylent, Keto Chow, Ketogenic|4 Comments
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Keto Chow for the Lactose Intolerant

This entry is part 88 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Over on Reddit there’s a great post from a guy that’s lactose intolerant and wanted to try Keto Chow. I often get questions about this in relation to the heavy cream and it’s interesting what he found. The TL;DR version is:

  • Don’t replace the heavy cream with MCT oil, 63ml of MCT is WAY too much for your GI tract.
  • Try a shake with 50ml of heavy cream in it, you might just be fine (this is what he determined and is what he is currently doing). Heavy cream actually has very little lactose (sugar) in it.
  • If you have problems with the cream, try putting lactose enzyme drops into keto chow when you mix it and let it sit overnight. The enzyme should break down the lactose.

Anyhow, it’s a good read. “If you or someone you know is lactose intolerant” you should check it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/3hr032/keto_for_the_lactose_intolerant/

By |2015-08-28T05:55:09-06:00August 28th, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent|4 Comments
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Awesome article over at Art Of Manliness: Everything You Know About Cholesterol Is Wrong

This entry is part 87 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

This was published yesterday, it’s a really good read and does a great job distilling down how messed up the “Generally Accepted Dietary Wisdom” is on Cholesterol: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/08/25/everything-you-know-about-cholesterol-is-wrong/ Some of the things he wrote lead me to believe he’s at minimum aware of ketogenic diets and maybe even doing keto/paleo.

There’s also an excellent section “Beyond Good and Bad Cholesterol: HDL and LDL Cholesterol” that describes the sub groupings within HDL and LDL. Not all LDL is bad, not all HDL is good and nobody talks about Lp(a).

So if you (or someone you know) has questions about cholesterol and how a ketogenic diet with all the bacon, cheese, eggs, and assorted yumminess (of Keto Chow =) can possibly be good for you, check it out! (also check out the rest of the site, it’s got some awesomely excellent information all over the place)

By |2015-08-26T05:38:07-06:00August 26th, 2015|Ketogenic, Weight Loss|Comments Off on Awesome article over at Art Of Manliness: Everything You Know About Cholesterol Is Wrong
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Video of mixing up a big batch of Chocolate Peanut Butter Keto Chow

This entry is part 86 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I decided to take a video of mixing up a batch of Chocolate Peanut Butter Keto Chow. The mixing device was sparkling clean before I dumped the powder into it, that powder is messy stuff man. For this video I let off the cover that normally keeps the dust down a bit. I will sometimes get requests for custom blends of Keto Chow (less salt, less fiber, etc…) that I used to be able to accommodate when I was mixing each batch individually, measuring out each individual ingredient as I show in my mixing video. That approach works fine for 1-8 weeks at a time but it doesn’t scale very well (yesterday I did 34 weeks of just Vanilla, 5 of those being destined for day pouches in addition to that many more of other flavors). So now I measure out the minerals into small bags that match a 10lb bag of Dymatize; a bag of minerals for each batch. I do a quick pre-mix of the minerals before adding them to the mixer because otherwise the calcium/magnesium citrates tend to clump. For the Peanut Butter flavor I also add the peanut flour and then start the mixer. You can see why I’m not able to reduce a single ingredient for 1 week pack.

Because of the peanut flour, every time I do the Chocolate Peanut butter flavor I have to spend 15 minutes or so cleaning everything (bins, scale, scoops) because even though my bags say “may contain peanuts” in the allergy section, I don’t want anybody to get sick.

In completely unrelated news I decided I should set up some social media accounts so there’s now one for “the” Facebook and the tweeter Twitter.

By |2015-08-21T09:48:25-06:00August 21st, 2015|Keto Chow|6 Comments
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Couple of changes to the recipe for Keto Chow in testing

This entry is part 85 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I finally got around to grinding up the multi-vitamin into a powder and seeing if it affected the taste of Keto Chow – it doesn’t. As soon as I can switch over my production pipeline I’m going to start incorporating it into the mix. There will likely be a transition period for a few weeks where the more popular flavors (I’m looking at you: Rich Chocolate) get swapped over almost immediately and the more exotic flavors are switched slower. I’m planning on putting a sticker on the updated ones, something along the lines of “No more vitamin pill, it’s in the mix!”. This will make things easier for everyone and I’ll stop forgetting to include the vitamins when I ship out a week. It will also null the questions about using a different vitamin which really wasn’t a good idea anyway.

I’m investigating adding Magnesium Glycinate (2g/day) to the mixture to raise the levels of magnesium. I recently got a really fun muscle cramp in my leg and while researching the cause and remedy I discovered that I probably need more magnesium. Keto Chow already has 555mg of magnesium (132% RDI) per day but some digging shows that on a ketogenic diet you probably need 300mg over the RDI. This change brings the total in Keto Chow above 900mg a day. I did a fair amount of research into the different forms of Magnesium. I could have added more magnesium citrate but the citric acid can act as a laxative. I ended up with wanting to go with either Magnesium Malate or Glycinate – both are highly bio-available and without the issues of some of the other forms of magnesium. I would have preferred the Malate but it was difficult to get in bulk powder form, whereas I can get the Glycinate in big bulk packages (and it also comes in smaller packages too).

So I’m currently testing both changes together: powdered vitamin and additional magnesium. I’m also testing a third change, this time to the fish oil. The stuff I usually take requires 5 fish oil pills, There’s a slightly more expensive one that I only need 2 per day. It also has an “enteric coating” that makes you not burp up fish taste. Taking the two is a bit easier. If all goes well in the test I’ll switch over the fish oil pills I sell from 35 for a week to 14 for a week. I’ll have to take new product pictures.

By |2015-08-17T09:40:21-06:00August 17th, 2015|Keto Chow, Soylent|16 Comments
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Great interview with a doctor, she explains how low carb works in simple terms

This entry is part 84 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

She’s been doing less than 20g/day of carbohydrates (Keto) for 13 years! She also does a very good comparison of her inability to tan and her tolerance for carbohydrates. Being pale and getting a sun burn doesn’t mean she doesn’t have enough will power – that’s just how her body is.

From the video description:

Nobody knows more about the practicalities of low carb than Dr. Mary Vernon. Here she explains it for you.

Dr Mary Vernon, MD, is one of the world’s foremost experts on treating obesity and diabetes with low carbohydrate nutrition. She is a practicing family physician, educates doctors on low carb and is active in and former president of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians (doctors specializing in treating obese patients).

By |2015-08-05T09:25:32-06:00August 5th, 2015|Ketogenic, Weight Loss|2 Comments
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Major problem with Chocolate Peanut Butter Keto Chow…

This entry is part 83 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I start drinking one and suddenly my blender bottle is empty and that makes me sad because I want MOAR. Breakfast and lunch today I was testing the “Peanut Flour Light 28 %” that finally arrived yesterday and both times I ended up drinking the whole thing down without even thinking about it and then it’s gone =( For those wanting to play along at home, here is the recipe.  I’ve also added it as a flavor to the weeks and samples of Keto Chow, though the weeks are on backorder while I’m waiting for more peanut flour to arrive this week (I’ll add it to days next week if it fits in the bags, it might not; the space is pretty tight without an extra 30g of stuff). The nutrition information is a combination of the detailed nutrition info I got from the manufacturer, coupled with the USDA info for peanut flour. I’ve tried 3 different ways of adding peanut to the mix: PB2, peanut flour and this new “28%” peanut flour. Of the three I like the 28% best. It has more peanut taste, has less carbohydrates and mixes up smoother with little to no chunks.

How good is Chocolate Peanut Butter Keto Chow? Let me put it this way: we were camping this last week and one of the children in our group kept complaining he was hungry. The sandwiches were gone and he wanted food. I told him “well, there’s some peanut butter chocolate keto chow in the cooler, you can have that” So he did. He drank most of it and commented that “it isn’t that bad, it’s kinda good”. From an 11 year old I’m going to consider that a ringing endorsement.

2015-08-01 17.49.00

I even got his parent’s permission to post this =)

By |2016-10-13T07:28:05-06:00August 4th, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent|1 Comment
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