Keto Faves and Fails: Which Low Carb Products Are Worth Your Money
New keto and low carb products get a taste test
When I decided to try the ketogenic diet for a month, I figured it would be a short-lived experiment. I just couldn’t imagine giving up bread, pasta, potatoes, and sweets forever.
Fast forward eight months. I’m still eating keto, and my body is loving it.
It’s not because I have a serious medical condition or a large amount of weight to lose. It’s just because eating keto makes me feel good.
I have no bloating or gas after meals, no crash-and-burn hunger cycles throughout the day, better endurance at the gym and improved mental clarity. Plus, my hunger hormones work perfectly now. When I’ve had enough to eat, I just don’t want any more food, an experience I never had before keto.
Still, I love food.
I love going out for meals. I love staying in and cooking. I love trying new foods. I just kind of love eating.
But in this roundup, I’ve gone beyond FBomb nut butters and Whisps cheese crisps. After all, you can read reviews of those keto products elsewhere.
And the funny thing is I don’t particularly miss carbs. What I miss most is just being able to go to the store and try new ingredients for recipes and new snacks and prepared foods that I can grab when I’m on the go.
Of course, I’ve tried all the usual suspects: macadamia nuts, cheese crisps, jerky, etc. And they’re all fine.
But in this roundup, I’ve gone beyond FBomb nut butters and Whisps cheese crisps. After all, you can read reviews of those keto products elsewhere.
And since they’re readily available at places like Target, Walmart, Costco and Amazon, it’s easy to grab a package on a shopping trip and try them for yourself without a huge time or cost barrier.
The foods I’m reviewing here tend to fall into the specialty category. You either can’t easily find them at major supermarkets, or they’re so expensive that you don’t want to buy them unless they’re truly worth it.
Which brings me to the most important point: I did not and will not receive any compensation for recommending these products. I received nothing free from these companies, and these are not affiliate links.
Ok, so on to my keto faves and fails!
Kbosh Artisan Keto
What it is: pizza crusts
Net carbs: 2 g per crust
Cost: $11.99 per package, which includes 2 crusts
Minimum order: 2 packages
Shipping: Free
These frozen pizza crusts come in an impressive array of flavors, including cauliflower, zucchini, kale, broccoli, Italian spinach, Mexican zucchini, and even three dessert flavors: dessert cauliflower, chocolate zucchini and pumpkin zucchini.
Though the company emphasizes that these crusts can be used for wraps, quesadillas, calzones and lasagna noodles, I think they’re too thick for those uses.
I tried three of the flavors and found all three to be reasonably tasty for a keto crust, but they still don’t compare to real pizza crust.
That said, these crusts did produce a decent tasting pizza, and it was much faster and easier than making your own fathead dough.
You must follow the baking directions exactly (cook the frozen crust in a nonstick skillet until medium brown on both sides, then place on a dark nonstick baking sheet, top with pizza toppings, and bake at 425 for 11–13 minutes). Otherwise, your pizza will be soggy.
Overall Grade: B-
Why: It’s not that I didn’t like these pizza crusts. They tasted fine. And I’d probably buy them again if they were available at my local supermarket. But for $6 per crust (each package has two crusts, and each crust really only feeds one person), it just wasn’t worth it to me.
Keto Pint
What it is: ice cream
Net carbs: 3 g per ½ cup serving
Cost: $6.99 per pint
Minimum order: 6 pints
Shipping: N/A
I really wanted to like this ice cream. I had tried to make my own keto ice cream several times and couldn’t get the texture right. Erythritol doesn’t play nice when it’s frozen. And allulose made my stomach upset.
I wasn’t willing to keep experimenting with other sweeteners and methods, so I figured I’d try someone else’s keto ice cream. My theory was that if someone had started a business to sell keto ice cream, they’d probably tinkered with the recipe a lot to get it just right.
That may be true, but in the case of Keto Pint ice cream, it just didn’t succeed. It’s not that the flavor was so bad (although it wasn’t good). The texture was the real problem. It had a highly-processed, artificial, almost oily mouth feel, kind of like Cool Whip if it were frozen solid.
I had ordered the minimum six pints, so I kept going back to try the ice cream many times. But I never managed to finish even one pint. It just wasn’t good — even after thawing for a half hour, even when using it as a topping on a slice of keto pie, even on a boat, with a goat, on a house, with a mouse…
Overall Grade: D
Why: I just didn’t like anything about this keto ice cream. It was expensive, tasteless and had a weird texture.
Dry Farm Wines
What it is: natural, additive-free, sugar-free wine
Net carbs: <1 g per liter
Cost: $88-$299
Minimum order: 3, 6 or 12 bottles
Shipping: Free
This is a wine club, so you can’t just buy one bottle to try. You have to sign up for three, six or 12 bottles to be delivered every month or every other month.
It seems like a big commitment, but in actuality, you can cancel at any time, and it’s super simple to do. I don’t drink much wine, so I canceled my membership right after my initial order, and it was no sweat.
The price of this wine is very expensive (at least in my book). I’m not used to paying upwards of $30 a bottle for wine. However, I also think it’s well worth it.
As Dry Farm Wines Founder Todd White explained in an interview with Land.com, “Conventional wines are filled with additives. There are 76 additives approved by the FDA for use in winemaking in the U.S.”
And because the American wine industry has successfully lobbied to keep label requirements off of wine, we consumers really have no idea what’s in the wine we’re consuming.
White follows a ketogenic diet, as do many of the top executives at Dry Farm Wines, and the wines they select for the club are all low in sugar and free of all additives. So while carb counts do not appear on the bottles, Dry Farm wines are lab tested to ensure they have less than 1 gram per liter of sugar. White says the company’s wines are all sourced overseas because no American wine meets its criteria.
Dry Farm wines are also organic, lower in alcohol, lower in sulfites and mycotoxin and mold free.
I ordered three bottles of reds and was delighted, but I immediately canceled my subscription because I didn’t want to commit to anything long term. A few months later, I ordered three bottles of whites and did the same thing.
I’ve also noticed that if you stay on the mailing list, the company will occasionally have special offers, where you can just order a few bottles without committing to a subscription.
Honestly, I loved all the wine I tasted from Dry Farm Wines. My palate has gotten much more sensitive to sweet things since I’ve been on keto, so I appreciate the lack of sugar in Dry Farm wines. I’ve also noticed that when I go out and order wine, it often tastes too sweet or too artificial to me, which makes me really appreciate Dry Farm Wines.
Overall Grade: A
Why: I adore these wines. I love the fact that the company does testing for purity and sugar content and has strict requirements for how the wine is grown. More importantly, I love the taste of these wines.
Fox Hill Kitchens
What it is: low carb buns, bagels and croutons
Net carbs: 1–2 g per serving
Cost: $9.99 per package
Minimum order: none
Shipping: $7-$11, depending on the size of the order
Before starting keto, I worried that I’d miss eating bread. I haven’t missed it nearly as much as I expected, but I do occasionally crave a bagel or grilled cheese sandwich. So I was anxious to try these buns and bagels.
The carb count is extremely low, the reviews were good, and the founder is a professional baker with a degree from New England Culinary Institute. I had high expectations.
Unfortunately, those expectations were immediately dashed. I didn’t like anything about these buns or bagels. They lacked flavor and texture and in no way resembled bread buns or bagels.
Bagels need a certain chewiness — it’s their defining characteristic. But these bagels were soft to the point of having little structure at all.
The buns were no better. I tried toasting the buns as suggested, and while that offered some improvement, I still hated every bite. I made a grilled cheese sandwich with the buns, and it was like eating a sandwich that had been dipped in water: soggy, without crunch, flavorless.
I ended up throwing away all six bags of these buns and bagels.
Overall Grade: D
Why: I didn’t like anything about these buns or bagels. You’re much better off making your own keto breads or bagels with fathead dough.
Siggi’s 4% No Added Sugar Yogurt
What it is: skyr (Icelandic yogurt)
Net carbs: 7–9 g per serving
Cost: $1.39 per container
Minimum order: n/a
Shipping: n/a
I thought my days of yogurt parfaits were over when I started keto. Even plain yogurt has a high carb count, thanks to naturally occurring lactose (milk sugar).
But Siggi’s 4% no added sugar yogurt not only has zero added sugar, it has a low carb count, too. The raspberry and apple flavor has 7 grams of carbs per container, and the banana and cinnamon has 9 grams of net carbs per container.
Since skyr is very thick and creamy (think Greek yogurt that has been strained), I find that a little of this yogurt goes a long way. But I love it as an alternative to bacon and eggs for breakfast. The flavors are delicious, and the texture is very satisfying.
Overall Grade: B
Why: I really like the taste and texture of this yogurt, and it’s become a regular, once-a-week breakfast for me. It’s also great that it’s widely available in supermarkets, Target and Walmart.
However, it’s a small serving size, and when you add toppings (e.g., low carb granola, pumpkin seeds, raspberries, etc.), you can easily eat a lot more carbs than you expected.
Live Drinking Vinegars
What it is: carbonated drink
Net carbs: 3 g per 8 oz. serving
Cost: $3.99 per 12 oz. bottle
Minimum order: N/A
Shipping: N/A
I discovered these drinking vinegars at a local health food store and instantly fell in love. They make a great alternative to soda or more carb-heavy kombucha and probiotic drinks.
These drinking vinegars come in great flavors, including concord grape, blueberry ginger, tart cherry and pomegranate & elderberry. And they’re made with organic, non-GMO raw apple cider vinegar and coconut vinegar, juice concentrates and stevia.
I was never a big soda drinker, but I’d developed quite a kombucha habit before I went keto. I was delighted to discover these healthy drinking vinegars that tasted great and could easily replace my once-a-day kombucha habit.
This company also offers probiotic sodas, which only have 5 g of carbs per serving, and kombucha, which has 8 g of carbs per serving.
My biggest complaint about this company is that it doesn’t sell direct to consumers or through any online retailer. That means I have to drive about 20 minutes to get these drinking vinegars. And while I am perfectly willing to do that, I’d love to be able to order these online.
Overall Grade: A-
Why: I love these drinking vinegars, and since I’ve never had a soda habit, I can easily limit myself to 8 oz. or less per day. The only reason I gave these drinking vinegars an A- instead of an A+ is because they’re not easy to order and they’re pricey.
It’s also worth noting that many keto people make their own version of drinking vinegar. However, I’ve never been able to duplicate the flavor of these drinking vinegars. But I’m happy to try a recipe if you have one, so go ahead and share in the comments below.
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