Preparation

Is Powdered MCT oil viable for Keto Chow

This entry is part 101 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

With Keto Chow there are several liquid ingredients you have to add to the mixture for it to be complete:

  • Heavy Cream
  • MCT Oil
  • Fish Oil

You have the option of doing the fish oil as pills (which is what I personally do). But wouldn’t it be cool to somehow include the MCT oil as well as the heavy cream? Well, I previously explored powdered cream, to put it quickly: turns out it’s powdered sweet cream and has WAY too much sugar, isn’t going to work. How about powdered MCT Oil?

To make an oil into a powder you have to mix it with a carbohydrate. Rosa Labs (Soylent 1.5) powders their oil using maltodextrin (a complex sugar) and you can get MCT oils that have been mixed similarly with starches and other sugars to form a powder. Keto 101 says you need to minimize the amount of carbohydrates that aren’t fiber so using maltodextrin isn’t going to work. I did discover that Quest (makers of Quest Bars) has a powdered MCT oil that uses “Soluble corn fiber” and claims to have 0g of sugars or complex carbohydrates. That might actually work. The problem then is the cost. a 454g (1 lb) container is $30 and for the 300 calories of MCT oil you would need 45g of the powdered MCT (1/10 the container per day) at a cost of $2.97. Regular MCT oil you need 39ml a day and it costs $0.59. Over the course of a week, liquid MCT oil would be $4.13 while the powdered stuff would cost $20.79. That isn’t even including the labor and other expenses if I were to include the MCT oil in the mix, that would probably drive up the price of a week of Keto Chow over $100.

So while it may be viable to include powdered MCT in the mix; economically it makes little sense, especially since you have to add other liquid ingredients anyway.

By |2016-10-13T07:28:02-06:00October 16th, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Preparation, Soylent|1 Comment
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Scaling up meals of Keto Chow (6 at a time!)

This entry is part 100 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Whilst replying to a thread over on reddit I remembered something I had pondered upon a few weeks ago: I was making 12 blender bottles of Keto Chow for my wife and myself (lasts a whole 2 days if we both eat 3 meals a day) and thought that making Keto Chow for 2 is workable though kinda tedious. What if ALL the family was on Keto Chow? Granted, the smaller kids wouldn’t drink a full one but the big kids would and I would still probably need 7 meals worth just for the one meal. Mixing them individually doesn’t scale well, so how do you scale it?

Others mentioned it before but I hadn’t ever tried it: mass mixing 3 or more meals at a time either in a blender or in a pitcher with an immersion blender. Last night I tried it. I target 1400 calories a day so I’m using 50ml of heavy cream per meal. I like the thickness when I mix it up to be 16 fluid ounces (about 475ml). At that volume I could fit 8 meals into a 1 gallon pitcher. Figured it would be nice to have some room at the top to avoid spilling so I decided to do 6 meals at a time. The math was easy enough, just multiple everything by 6. 50g of powder = 300g. 50ml of heavy cream = 300ml. 13ml of MCT oil = 78ml.

  • I stuck it all in the pitcher then added water to about the half point.
  • I blended it for a bit with the immersion blender to get it going and then finished filling with water to the 3 quart mark.
  • Kept the blender going for about 5 minutes.
  • Finally I measured out 16 ounces into individual bottles and stuck them in the fridge.

The time stamps on my camera say it took 7 minutes from start to finish. Awesome!

By |2015-10-12T10:17:29-06:00October 12th, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Preparation, Soylent|4 Comments
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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|Preparation, On Tour, Soylent, Uncategorized, 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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Coconut Cream as a possible substitute for heavy cream in Keto Chow

This entry is part 72 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

A comment on another post asked about the feasibility of using coconut cream for Keto Chow.

It just might work.

I looked into “Trader Joe’s Coconut Cream”:

coconut-cream-facts

I calculated for 250ml of this Coconut Cream for a target kCal/day of 1300 (same as 50ml of heavy cream. It ups the NET carbs from 12g to 20g/day which isn’t optimal but should work fine. It is significantly more expensive though, the 250ml costs around $3.50 a day, compared to $0.75 for the same amount of calories from heavy cream. I also don’t have figures for the Omega 3 and 6 content so those end up red on the recipe editor.

Still, I’m going to grab some and give it a try, see how it goes. For those that can’t handle heavy cream, this might be a viable option. Update: here are the results.

By |2016-10-13T07:28:08-06:00June 19th, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Preparation, Soylent|2 Comments
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Preparing a week of Keto Chow powder – video

This entry is part 50 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Time to post a video of mixing up a week of Keto Chow. It’s very similar to my earlier videos for People Chow and Ketofood. You can find the recipe for Keto Chow here. There’s also a video showing what to do with the powder, mixing up 3 meals here.

I mix all 7 days at the same time and do not have a problem with it separating or consistency in the mixture. It’s pretty tiring when people want to argue the merits of mixing this way so I’m not going to argue with them anymore =) I’ve been mixing this way for going on 8 months, never had a problem. You don’t like it? don’t use it! Go ahead and mix every day individually; but this works far better for me than mixing individual days ever did.

By |2016-10-13T07:28:15-06:00March 27th, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Preparation, Soylent|10 Comments
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State of People Chow

This entry is part 39 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

I still haven’t heard anything from MaxK about him launching a new place to order People Chow. To re-cap briefly: I stopped mixing people chow for new customers and am only sending it to existing subscribers. In my opinion Keto Chow is way better than People Chow, even if you’re not going full-bore with a ketogenic diet. I still have great videos showing how to mix your own People Chow. So where can you get People Chow if you still want to order some pre-mixed? Here are a few sources:

By |2016-10-13T07:28:18-06:00March 2nd, 2015|Preparation, Soylent|Comments Off on State of People Chow
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For fun I tried making Keto Chow cookies

This entry is part 28 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Just for fun I decided to see what making Keto Chow into a solid would be like. I did People Chow cookies several months ago so I thought I’d try that form. I just put a meal’s worth of powder into a bowl, added the oil and the heavy cream and mixed it up.

Mixing up the oil, cream and powder

Mixing up the oil, cream and powder

"dough" mixed up and ready

“dough” mixed up and ready

Ready for baking

Ready for baking, 10min @350

The Finished, baked, cookies

The Finished, baked, cookies

It’s hard to see in the above picture of the finished “cookies” but they’re sitting in a pool of oil that came out during cooking. Mixed up liquid Keto Chow tastes sweet like a milk shake (kinda) but the sweeteners in the protein don’t seem to be doing much in baked form. I’m not sure if it’s because the stuff didn’t actually dissolve in the little water that was in the cream or what. In the end, the potassium citrate and salt ended up making them markedly salty. They’re not awful but the liquid form is better.

I’ll probably try it again but I might try not cooking or maybe with an egg added in too. I’ll also likely use the vanilla flavor instead of the chocolate mint (can’t even taste the mint in the baked form).

By |2016-10-13T07:28:21-06:00January 9th, 2015|Preparation, Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent|Comments Off on For fun I tried making Keto Chow cookies
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Mixed up some chocolate Keto Chow

This entry is part 25 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

A commenter on my last post asked if it’s possible to mix up without any coconut flour at all. Yes but you have to increase the psyllum husk to 18g. I wasn’t sure what that would taste like but I was interested to try it. Unfortunately my shipment of Chocolate Mint, Strawberry and Vanilla proteins will not be arriving until Monday. So I mixed up some keto chow using the little chocolate flavored protein I still had, but without any coconut flour.

Keto Chow powder (1 day)

1 day of Keto Chow. There isn’t much to it, only about 140g of stuff.

It’s still funny how small it is, less than 150g of powder that you mix with around a half cup of heavy cream, some MCT oil and… that’s your daily nutrients!

Keto Chow - 3 meals in blender bottles

3 different bottles with Keto Chow mixed up.

I put it in the refrigerator and let it hang out for a while. As expected, the psyllum husk powder absorbed a lot of water and thickened up the mixture a little bit. I might not need so much Xanthan Gum, I’ll probably cut it in half for my next batch. It feels smooth and creamy in my mouth and tastes like… well, a bit like slightly watered down chocolate milk. I think it maybe can use some additional chocolate flavoring, my wife disagrees and thinks it tastes great as it is. It should work well with the different flavored protein powders that are coming on Monday. Here’s a close up of the mixed stuff after refrigeration and a few hours:

Keto Food after 3 hours

Keto Chow after 3 hours

The psyllum goes nearly transparent and it’s the majority of the bits you see in the mixture. Notably there isn’t hardly any separation whereas Ketofood does quite a bit:

Ketofood separation

Ketofood after 4 hours.

OK, let’s look a little closer!

A spoon dipped in Ketofood, no chia seeds here

A spoon dipped in Ketofood, no chia seeds for a change

Spoon dipped in Keto Chow. It's mostly bubbles and psyllum that you see.

Spoon dipped in Keto Chow. It’s mostly bubbles and psyllum that you see.

And here’s the same test in video format:

My next batch will probably be strawberry or vanilla, have half the xanthan gum and I might put back in some of the coconut flour to see what it does to the flavor and texture.

By |2016-10-13T07:28:24-06:00January 3rd, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Preparation, Soylent|3 Comments
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