With so many people jumping onto the “ketogenic diet” bandwagon right now, more and more people are starting to wonder if this diet plan is for them. Even if you are not on a ketogenic diet, you would be hard pressed not to have seen keto specific food now popping up in your supermarket.
Marketers are onto the fact the ketogenic diet appears not to be going where they wanted it to and are starting to make “ready to go” keto friendly snacks. Should you indulge?
Here are some points to keep in mind about keto products…
1. Calories Matter. First, take note calories more than anything else matter here. Too many people dive into including keto snacks in their eating plan without so much as thinking about looking at the calorie count. If you eat a snack containing 400 calories that will need to be factored in somewhere!
Compare this to a non-traditional keto snack such as an apple at a 100 calories, and which do you think is better for your weight loss plan? You could even add some peanut butter to the apple to help better balance it out and you would still be under 200 calories, way less than the calories in the keto snack.
2. Keto Does Not Necessarily Mean “Weight Loss Friendly.” Also, remember keto does not mean weight loss friendly. While many people use the ketogenic diet to lose weight, you still need to think about calories as just noted. Some people use this diet for health reasons, and many of these snacks are better marketed to them because they are not watching their calories so heavily.
Just because a product states it is keto does not necessarily mean it is designed to help you lose weight. The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet so it greatly lowers your carbohydrate intake, replacing it with fat.
3. Check The Nutrition. Finally, also keep nutrition in mind. If the keto snack is heavily processed as many are, and as one aims to replace some of the processed high carb snacks in their eating plan, they are still not always healthy. A chocolate bar is never a good choice, no matter if it is a keto bar or not. So do not lose common sense just because you see the term “keto.”
If you keep these points in mind, you should be better prepared to decipher the marketing of keto products and ensure they do not steer you away from your smart course of eating healthily.
