Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

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> It’s really interesting to see the diet industry attack this. Calling it a “fad diet” as if eating low carbs is somehow a fad. Other things I’ve seen are essentially “keto diets are for treating epilepsy, not for losing weight!” Etc.

> Keto diets don’t require you to buy any products or books or take any courses or anything. Just literally read the nutrition facts and eat 20-50 carbs a day.

But that's the issue, isn't it?

Sometimes I feel like changing my usual snack of apples with some kind of biscuit / cookie. It's next to impossible to find anything below 500 kCals / 100 g at my local grocery store. And when I look at the ingredients, there's always a ton of sugar in there.

The only lower-ish processed food I can easily find is sorbet. But that's impractical to deal with at work (we don't have a freezer).

So most of the time, I end up buying nothing if I don't feel like an apple. Why would "big ag" cheer me in going this route?

I should note I'm not even into Keto or anything, just paying attention to how many calories I eat.

There are plenty of snacks that are keto-friendly: beef jerky (no sugar added), boiled eggs, celery + peanut butter, smoked oysters... the list goes on. Yes, cookies are not included in that list, if that's a deal-breaker for you then it seems like this diet wouldn't work for you I guess.

Cookies are one of those rare foods that most diets can agree you shouldn't eat, so that doesn't really have anything to do with keto. The only space for debate about cookies is whether you should have little or none (other than for high-power people who need to cover an energy deficit, which sounds like it would be a nice problem.)

I've done keto a handful of times and found some really great snacks. Low carb cheesecakes, macaroons, peanut butter cookies, brownies with walnuts. They certainly don't taste as good as the regular version but they'll fill a craving.

Typically you're swapping flour for almond flour and sugar for erythritol.

I used cookies to mean "generic sweets", as opposed to fruit. I don't particularly like "actual cookies".

I'm in France, so the only time I've seen beef jerky in my life was when some dude I used to know brought some from the US. Furthermore, I'm really not sure if we have anything similar over here.

Note, I said I wasn't doing keto (never have) so I don't specifically look for no-carb options. I just realize that those foods are more like "cravings", so they won't make me eat less during the regular meals. If I want to reduce my calorie intake, I need to cut somewhere. So I usually look into cutting the calories of the snacks. While I love almonds and other dried fruits (and their butter), they typically have a lot of calories. IIRC, pistachios have something like 600 kCals and I can easily eat way too many.

Beef jerky is just a form of cured meat. You can also eat salami :-)

One cup almond flour, one quarter cup erythritol, 3 tablespoons of butter, a tablespoon of cinnamon, half a tablespoon of vanilla, bake at 350 for 12 minutes, let cool for a half hour. Keto cookies.

You can try baking your own cookies, biscuits and dry stuff like that. It's one of the really easy things to bake, they're durable, you can make them exactly to your preferences, add fiber etc. And if you want to geek out tuning the recipes and stuff, there is a lot of potential for that.

I usually do either that, or eat fruit. But sometimes I haven't had the time to bake, the fruit at the local store doesn't look all that great, etc.

Try Quest Nutrition Chocolate Chip cookies. They are awesome (like most of the things Quest makes), and less than 1g of carb per unit.

I'll try to find some, but I've never seen that brand around here (France).

I usually tend to buy protein bars from a sporting goods store, which have the benefit of making me feel full after one or two, and make me eat noticeably less at the following meal. But said store is quite out of my way, so I don't always have those on hand, and they do have a bit too much sugar for my taste.

iHerb ships those internationally.

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