Keto Chow

Transition complete: all packages have the vitamins mixed in now

We started adding the vitamins to the mixture about a month ago. Some of the flavors and sizes are less popular than others and some we had just made a lot the day before the transition started. As of Saturday, all of the packages now have the vitamins included in the mixture so there isn’t a need to have a bag of them and you don’t have to remember to take one a day. We will probably continue putting the “No more vitamin pills, it’s in the mix” labels on the packages for about a month so everyone can be aware of the change.

By |2015-09-28T10:53:15-06:00September 28th, 2015|Site or Store Stuff, Keto Chow|Comments Off on Transition complete: all packages have the vitamins mixed in now
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Pro tip: close the lid

This entry is part 96 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

At a training, all the is to eat is pastries and fruit. I guess I could eat the butter but that’s a bit excessive. Luckily I brought along keto chow (I planned on this happening and didn’t want to go into carb coma during class), unluckily I apparently did not securely close the little spout. Had to spend 15 minutes in the bathroom cleaning up my backpack. I guess I should be happy it only spilled a little bit.

By |2015-09-13T08:41:45-06:00September 13th, 2015|Keto Chow, On Tour|Comments Off on Pro tip: close the lid
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Making Keto Chow in a Hotel

This entry is part 95 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Doing something like Keto Chow in a hotel room presents some interesting issues. I’ve done another “soylent” in hotels before and I’ve done Keto Chow while camping. I’m using a couple tools to make this all work in my hotel room.

  1. A refrigerator. Doesn’t come standard in the room though a quick call to the front desk and it’s happily chilling out.
  2. Shelf stable cream, specifically the Trader Joe’s brand. While it’s not the same fat content as the Heavy Cream I normally use, this travels well and you don’t have to worry about it. It comes in smallish 8 ounce containers and plugging the nutrition information from the package into the Recipe Editor on diy.soylent.me it says that I need to use all 236ml per day to get 1400 calories. This works out to 78ml per meal. So I open a box, split it 3 ways and I’m done with that box.
  3. I brought along two of the 18oz Hydro Flask insulated containers. These should keep lunch nicely chilled all day.
  4. I brought along a bottle brush and dish soap. You have to scrub out the hydro flasks (and blender bottles).
  5. I have 3 blender bottles. I’m going to mix in these and transfer 1 or 2 meals into the hydro flasks as needed.
  6. I stopped and grabbed a bottle of liquid coconut oil since my containers of MCT oil are the massive 64 ounce ones.
  7. Scale, measuring cups, a bowl to measure into and some fish oil pills.

Anyhow, should be interesting to see how it all works out. I have classes tomorrow and the included breakfast is bagels and pastries. No way am I eating that junk. Going to bring along my Keto Chow and if I’m lucky there will be a cheese tray during lunch.

By |2016-10-13T07:28:03-06:00September 12th, 2015|On Tour, Soylent, Uncategorized, Preparation, Keto Chow, Ketogenic|1 Comment
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New “how to prepare Keto Chow” video (6 meals)

This entry is part 93 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Had some time yesterday to make a new video on how to prepare Keto Chow. I also wanted to talk about using an insulated thermos like this 40 ounce Hydro Flask or this 16 ounce one because you can use them for when you won’t have refrigeration available. You can also use them to maintain “slushy” for hours Keto Chow made mostly with ice in a blender (think Wendy’s Frosty). Takes me about 14 minutes to make 6 meals worth in the video, it’s faster if you’re not ‘splaining stuff.

By |2015-09-02T05:51:26-06:00September 2nd, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Preparation, Soylent|7 Comments
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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|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent|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|Soylent, Ketogenic, Keto Chow|4 Comments
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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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