With so many people jumping on the “ketogenic diet” bandwagon right now, more and more people are beginning to wonder if this diet plan is for them. Even if you’re not following a keto diet, you’d be hard-pressed not to have seen keto-specific foods now popping up in your grocery store.
Marketers are picking up on the fact that the keto diet seems not to be going where they want it to be and are starting to make “off the shelf” keto snacks. Should you indulge?
Here are some points to keep in mind about keto products…
1. Calories matter. First of all, keep in mind the calories that matter the most here. Too many people dive into including keto snacks in their eating plan without even thinking to look at the calorie count. If you eat a snack that contains 400 calories, that will need to be accounted for somewhere!
Compare this to a non-traditional keto snack, like a 100-calorie apple, and which do you think is better for your weight loss plan? You could even add a little peanut butter to the apple to help balance it better and it would still be under 200 calories, much less than the calories in the keto snack.
2. Keto doesn’t necessarily mean “weight loss friendly.” Also, remember that keto doesn’t mean it’s weight loss friendly. While many people use the keto diet to lose weight, you still need to think about calories as mentioned above. Some people use this diet for health reasons, and many of these snacks are better marketed to them because they aren’t watching their calories as much.
Just because a product says it’s keto doesn’t necessarily mean it’s designed to help you lose weight. The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet, so you greatly reduce your carb intake, replacing it with fat.
3. Check Nutrition. Lastly, also consider nutrition. If the keto snack is heavily processed, as many are, and since one is aiming to replace some of the high-carb processed snacks in their eating plan, they still aren’t always healthy. A candy bar is never a good choice, no matter if it’s a keto bar or not. So don’t lose your common sense just because you see the term “keto.”
By keeping these points in mind, you should be better prepared to decipher the marketing of keto products and make sure they don’t derail you from your smart course of eating healthy.
