chris

About chris

Chris Bair is a computer geek and SalesForce.com system administrator for his "day job". He became involved in the powdered foods (aka "soylent") movement in January 2014, originally with a conventional recipe and later switching to a high fat, low carb "ketogenic" variant on October 2014. In January 2015 he created the recipe for Keto Chow and released it without restriction for anyone to use, at the same time he began mixing the recipe up for people that wanted a finished product and has seen steady growth in the business every month since. Conversely since starting Keto, he has added 6 new holes to his belt and recently bought a far smaller belt. He has also eaten far more bacon and cheese than in all his previous years combined trying to avoid fat but still slowly gaining weight. Chris has lived in Utah for most of his life, except for a few years living in Chile where he learned Castillian. Chris and his wife have two sets of twins with a couple singltons thrown in for good measure.
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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|Soylent, Keto Chow|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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All multi-vitamins are not created equal

This entry is part 82 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

…though I’m sure their mothers love them all very much. I get asked a lot about the vitamins I include in Keto Chow, specifically they’re the “Kirkland Signature Daily Multi” from Costco. Can you use a different multi-vitamin? maybe but you will likely have deficiencies in some areas and overages in others. The recipe for Keto Chow is matched with the Kirkland vitamins, to the extent that if you want to use a different vitamin pill it has to have essentially the exact same amounts of the various vitamins and minerals and at that point you might as well just use the Kirkland ones.

When my wife started doing Keto, she wanted to use the multi-vitamins she had been using before. The only way to know if it will work is to clone the Keto Chow recipe, delete the Kirkland multi-vitamin and add your own vitamin into the recipe. When I tried this with my wife’s vitamins there were some serious problems, even though they were vitamins “for women” they had no iron, low vitamin K and no iodide/iodine. About 2 months ago I looked into using Celebrate Multivitamins because they are in capsules that could be opened up and integrated into the dry powder, which would solve a lot of issues. Here’s what I ended up with:Celebrate vitamins

Yeah, THAT’s not going to fly. So I’m back on the Kirkland. So once again, you can use a different multi-vitamin but you’re gambling that it has the stuff you need when coupled with what’s available in Keto Chow. For reference, here is the Supplement facts for the Kirkland vitamins (click to embiggen):

Kirkland signature

 

By |2016-10-13T07:28:05-06:00July 29th, 2015|Soylent, Ketogenic, Keto Chow|6 Comments
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Single day packs are coming

Some time ago I asked for feedback on the viability of doing 3-meal single day packs of Keto Chow. Then I went on a couple vacations but now I’m back and ready to go. I sourced the bags back in May and have had them for quite a while but I just didn’t have the time to figure out the logistics of packaging them and whatnot. This last weekend I finally got that done. I have initial runs of Rich Chocolate and Chocolate Mint already to go and I’ll be getting the rest of the flavors done soon. Once I have some inventory I’ll launch it though that probably won’t be until Wednesday or Thursday.

One of the big questions I had was how much could I ship in the priority mail boxes I’m using. With my test run I was able to answer that:

  • I can fit one into a small first class envelope that I currently use for samples.
  • I can fit two in a small flat rate box.
  • I can fit 7 into the padded flat rate envelopes I’m using to ship the week bags currently.
  • I can fit 14 into a medium flat rate box.
  • I cannot 28 into a large flat rate box, this sucks because that’s how I typically ship the “Build a Month*” with 4 of the week packages, the most I could fit was 27.
  • I can only fit 23 into a Regional Rate B box (useful for closer destinations like California), which sucks since a B will also hold 4 weeks of the larger bags:

2015-07-25 21.37.57The only real big question I have yet to figure out is the multi-vitamin situation. In the future I expect that I’ll replace the individual meal samples with these 1-day packs (I’m still toying with pricing but depending on the flavor it’s about 24% less than buying 3 of the samples) so People will be using them to try out the flavors. If you’re just doing a sample then the vitamin really isn’t vital and putting 1-3 vitamins in a shipment doesn’t sound hard but it gets messy pretty quickly. It’s not a money thing but simply logistics. My initial thought is to include the pills in the upcoming “Build a week” package and probably include the full bag with the seven vitamins if 5 or more days get ordered. Order 1-4 and you wouldn’t get the vitamins. But this is still up in the air right now.

Oh, and for the record: the week packs aren’t going away.

 

By |2016-10-13T07:28:05-06:00July 27th, 2015|Soylent, Ketogenic, Keto Chow, Site or Store Stuff|6 Comments
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Interesting user experience with blood sugar on Keto Chow

I did my own test a while ago on the effects of Keto Chow on my own blood sugar levels, a customer (Hi Nick!) sent me an email today (he looked this post over before I published it):

I am diabetic, and I’ve been taking daily measurements of blood glucose.  The first week, my BG fell from around 150 to 107, and then as kind of a control I switched out one meal for ‘real food’ that I would have typically eaten and my BG rose throughout the week to a rather steep 180 on a night where I splurged a bit more than usual.  Toning it back down to only the shakes and I had a

[measurement] of 104 the other evening.

Would the full graph be useful as public knowledge?  I have measurements for ‘first thing in the morning’ and then two hours after dinner time.

It’s not a cure for diabetes by any stretch, but, it has been helping me to manage my blood [glucose] and getting it into the 100 range reliably is only slightly high for a normal person, and in my opinion, very good for a diabetic.

I’ve attached an export from the app I’m using. […] There’s notes about various things and weight measurements on some of them.   The period 7/5 to 7/11 shows what my normal eating habits did to it, where as from 6/30 to 7/5 was all on keto chow with only the occasional snack and one day where I supplemented since I mixed up my numbers and prepared all 3 shakes for that day with an extremely low amount of … shake 😛  7/12 to today shows my glucose recovering after only a few days of turning down on the normal food again.  Keto chow was at least two of my meals on every day throughout this two week period.

I’m expecting the next two weeks to be a little more insightful, as there is lots of deviation in this chart that shows what happens with a diabetic eating normal food, and then what happens when I’m only on the keto chow shakes.

If Nick decides to share the additional data I’ll post an update. So here is the data, first graphical and then the raw values and notes:

Levels graphed

Date Time Event Value Units Notes
06/30/2015 06:38 Out Of Bed 138 mg/dL 224.6 lbs. Start ketochow
06/30/2015 09:54 After Dinner 120 mg/dL Soylent and a few chocolate raisins
07/01/2015 06:25 Out Of Bed 149 mg/dL 224.4
07/01/2015 09:42 After Dinner 118 mg/dL
07/02/2015 07:02 Out Of Bed 138 mg/dL 222
07/02/2015 10:43 After Dinner 110 mg/dL messed up shakes ate Jimmy John’s unwich instead
07/03/2015 08:48 After Dinner 118 mg/dL
07/03/2015 10:06 Out Of Bed 107 mg/dL 220 lbs
07/04/2015 04:55 Before Dinner 105 mg/dL
07/04/2015 06:01 Out Of Bed 136 mg/dL Had 2 hotdogs as a late night snack
07/04/2015 10:17 After Dinner 126 mg/dL
07/05/2015 09:46 After Dinner 142 mg/dL ate fries and double quarter pounder
07/05/2015 09:57 Out Of Bed 134 mg/dL
07/06/2015 06:47 Out Of Bed 149 mg/dL
07/06/2015 09:10 After Dinner 128 mg/dL
07/07/2015 06:35 Out Of Bed 143 mg/dL
07/07/2015 10:17 After Dinner 131 mg/dL Chicken and broccoli
07/08/2015 06:24 Out Of Bed 137 mg/dL
07/08/2015 10:02 After Dinner 144 mg/dL
07/09/2015 06:43 Out Of Bed 133 mg/dL Large steak for dinner last night
07/09/2015 10:34 After Dinner 148 mg/dL
07/10/2015 07:16 Out Of Bed 144 mg/dL
07/10/2015 09:58 Before Bed 153 mg/dL
07/11/2015 09:27 Out Of Bed 155 mg/dL
07/11/2015 11:27 After Dinner 184 mg/dL ate out at Chili’s  splurged on chips and salsa
07/12/2015 08:58 Out Of Bed 151 mg/dL
07/12/2015 10:31 After Dinner 117 mg/dL
07/13/2015 09:00 Out Of Bed 133 mg/dL
07/13/2015 10:05 After Dinner 104 mg/dL
07/14/2015 06:10 Out Of Bed 122 mg/dL

By |2016-10-13T07:28:05-06:00July 14th, 2015|Soylent, Ketogenic, Keto Chow|1 Comment
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Glycemic Load and Index

This entry is part 80 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

There is a pretty interesting thread on Reddit about the glycemic load of the official Rosa Labs Soylent 1.5 and how it has twice the  glycemic load as Coca Cola. It got me thinking: I wonder what the glycemic index of Keto Chow would be. I already know that it has virtually no detectable impact on blood sugar levels (at least in my own n=1 test). How would I test?

This is from http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/1/247S.full

The glycemic index (GI) is a measure of the blood glucose-raising ability of the available carbohydrate in foods defined as the incremental area under the glycemic response curve (AUC) elicited by a portion of food containing 50 g available carbohydrate expressed as a percentage of the AUC elicited by 50 g glucose in the same subject.

OK, so in summary: you give 50g of pure glucose to a study participant and check their blood sugar at intervaals for 2 hours. Then you wait a long time (you have to be fasting for quite a while before hand) and do it again but with 50g of “available” (NET) carbohydrates. I don’t think I could test using the generally accepted testing procedure since Keto Chow only has (depending on the flavor) 12g of non-fiber carbohydrates per day. So you would need to consume 4 days worth of keto chow (again, I’m not talking about 4 meals, I’m talking about 12 meals!) to get the 50g necessary. That’s nuts.

The Rich Chocolate flavor of Keto Chow has one of the higher net carbs with 6.0g of net carbs per meal. or roughly the same as 1.5 teaspoons of D-glucose (aka: “Dextrose” which is the same as glucose). So I suppose I could test 1 meal of Rich Chocolate and compare it to 6g of D-Glucose. But again, it’ll be a n=1 test and not of much value other than “gee whiz!”. I’ll still probably do it but not for a while.

 

By |2016-10-13T07:28:05-06:00July 13th, 2015|Ketogenic, Keto Chow, Soylent|2 Comments
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