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Off-the-shelf keto: cereal, ice cream, Suntella, hemp milks

Updated: Sep 12, 2020

It is always much easier to buy something than to make it from scratch, but that's super hard on medical keto so it's always a joy to find something that works (or at least that works alongside a syringe of olive oil). Here are a few recent favorites:

Thrive Market coconut flake cereal: most "keto" cereals involve nuts and while that world is opening up to us a bit, it's easier to not deal with it. This coconut flake cereal is the first thing I've found that I can easily adapt. For a 2.5:1 ratio, we add 15g whole milk and 22g 40% heavy cream to 10g of the cereal for M's breakfasts, and he's a fan. (A note on Thrive Market: they are a membership-based online market. They have a bunch of products that cater to special diets. They also have a lot of wellness woo I could do without, but for unique stuff we can use on M's diet, they're unbeatable. You can get 25% off your first order with this link.)

The Cereal School (link gives you 10% off your first purchase): someone pointed me here - they have a high-protein, low-carb breakfast cereal product that is designed to imitate fun kid cereals like Fruity Pebbles or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. This is pretty high in protein for a classic keto diet, but like the coconut flake cereal, we can make up the ratio with heavy cream as the "milk". Our daughter gets to have fun obnoxiously colored sugary cereal on Sunday mornings, so it's nice to be able to let M feel like he can participate in this little tradition as well. I will warn that they are wicked backordered right now (I'm still waiting on the order I placed a month ago) so I can't vouch for the taste, but I'm optimistic. I have also heard that Magic Spoon cereals are better tasting, though the macros make them harder for classic keto.

Rebel Ice cream: someone in the keto-for-epilepsy Facebook group posted about this and I nearly cried with happiness. We love getting ice cream as a family in the summer - we're fortunate to have two really great locally-owned ice cream shops within biking distance - and while I am entirely capable of making my own ice cream (and there are many keto ice cream recipes), I already spend a ton of time on food prep for M so desserts often take a back seat. Low-fat ice cream abounds, but that's the opposite direction we want to go in; low-sugar ice cream also usually means low-fat and high protein. Rebel is a much more classic-keto-friendly macronutrient balance that is incredibly easy to bump up to his ratio with some heavy cream, which you could do either in liquid form (I let the ice cream melt a bit, add the heavy cream, and mix it all up) or whip the cream and use it as a topping. It's available at one of our local grocery chains so it's not even something I have to order online. When I get a pint, I portion it out into some of our mini-Tupperware, add the right amount of cream, and stock them in the freezer for easy access the next time we have an ice cream outing. If I pack the mini-Tupperware along with a Ziploc bag full of ice cubes in a lunchbox when we go out, it's usually melted and shaken up enough that the consistency is still perfectly ice-creamy and M absolutely loves it.


Lakanto Suntella: Nutella, except (1) sunflower seeds instead of hazelnuts for the nut-allergic and (2) low carb. On its own, this is a little over 2:1, so it's a great classic-keto-friendly spread. M is a huge fan. I make him fat bombs of melted cacao butter and this that he can have alongside a little handful of fruit and it's one of his favorite snacks. (Side note, if you were grossed out by that thing that went around Facebook a year or two ago showing all the oil in Nutella, all the oil that goes into emulsions like this is literally the selling point for this being keto-friendly so you'll be grossed out by this too.)


Living Harvest Unsweetened Vanilla Hemp Milk: I had dismissed plant milks as an option for M because I assumed they were either all nut-based, coconut-based (and he's tired of coconut), or soy-based (which is too high in protein) but then I bothered to look at the label on some unsweetened vanilla flavored hemp milk at the store and discovered it's almost exactly 2.5:1. Because he gets so much dairy in his diet and he occasionally will get an upset stomach after having a whole bunch to eat or drink at a meal, I like the option to just hand him a cup of hemp milk to drink. It's also much lower in calorie by volume than his keto shakes are, so as we are working to get him relying less on keto shakes than on solid food for his calorie intake, the hemp milk makes a good substitute. He also seems to really enjoy the flavor and it mixes well with his orange-flavored FruitiVits vitamins (and also, recently, his new carnatine supplement. Ahh, keto.)


(Required disclaimer: this post contains some referral links that may earn me a very small commission or credit if you make a purchase after following them)

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