Ingredients to avoid on a low carb or keto diet
, medical review by Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, MD
If you can focus on healthy, whole foods and keep high-carb and potentially unhealthy ingredients out of your cart, you set yourself up for low carb or keto success.
But do we need to completely avoid certain ingredients? Or can we limit them and still partake in small amounts? Of course, that depends on your goals and your reaction to these ingredients. Here is our take on the four key ingredients to look for when buying packaged goods: sugar, starch, industrial fats, and sugar replacements.
Print this list and bring it with you to the market.
1. Limit sugar
2. Limit starch
But if your goal is to avoid starch completely, you need to stay away from all grains and almost all kinds of flour, with the exception of nut flours. And you need to avoid starchy vegetables like beans and tubers, too.
So watch for ingredients like these and keep products made with them out of your cart:
Amaranth
Barley
Buckwheat
Corn
Oats
Millet
Rice
Rye
Quinoa
Sorghum
Teff
Wheat
Wild Rice
Bulgar
Bran
Burghul
Couscous
Durum
Einkorn
Emmer
Farina
Farro
Flour
Graham flour
Kamut
Orzo
Semolina
Spelt
Triticale
Wheat berries
White flour
Arrowroot
Cornmeal
Cornstarch
Cassava
Chickpea flour or Gram
Cottonseed
Dal
Fava bean
Inulin
Lentil
Manioc
Modified starch
Powdered cellulose
Potato
Sago
Taro
Soy
Tapioca
Plantain or Banana
Mesquite
Starchy vegetables
Sweet potatoes & yams
Vegetable starch
Worried about baking without grains? Fear not. Low carb baking is still possible with ingredients like almond flour, coconut flour, and psyllium husk powder. Check out our guide low carb baking 101, to learn more.
For help finding low carb nut flours and other specialty items, check out our guide on how to shop for low carb extras online.
You might want to check out our low carb bread recipes, too.
3. Limit industrial fats
All fats are not created equal. Reviewing the ingredient list on products at the supermarket — before you buy — can help you eat more healthy, naturally-occurring fat and avoid or limit industrial oils.
We encourage you to completely avoid artificially produced trans fats, usually listed as “partially hydrogenated” oil or vegetable shortening. These fats are banned in Europe and are in the process of being eliminated from the US food supply due to concerns about their health effects.
In addition, we suggest you minimize margarine and the highly-processed vegetable oils listed below. Unlike olive oil, coconut oil, and nut oils that are pressed and minimally processed, most vegetable oils are produced with high heat, solvents, deodorizers, and bleach.
Although there isn’t convincing data to show industrial seed oils are detrimental to our health, the evolutionary and mechanistic concerns are enough for us to recommend mostly sticking to the less processed, more natural oils and fats.
Read more in our guide — Vegetable oils: are they healthy?
Diglycerides
Hydrogenated anything
Interesterified oils
Margarine
Monoglycerides
Partially hydrogenated anything
Shortening
Vegetable shortening (like Crisco)
Canola
Corn
Cottonseed
Grapeseed
Rice bran
Safflower
Soybean
Note that for avoiding trans fat, the ingredient list is a better guide than the nutrition facts label. Artificial trans fats may be present in small amounts, up to 0.49 grams per serving, and the nutrition facts label will still show 0 grams trans fat. Small amounts can add up, especially when serving sizes are small, so check the ingredients before assuming a product is trans fat free.
And you probably don’t need to worry about the small amounts of naturally occurring trans fats in whole foods like meat and butter.
Read more about fats in our guide — Healthy fats on a keto or low carb diet. And while you are at it, why not check out our guide to eating more of the right kinds of fat — The top 10 ways to eat more fat.
4. Minimize sugar replacements
Here are the names of sugar replacements you might see on an ingredient list:
Erythritol
Glycerol
Isomalt
Lactitol
Maltitol
Mannitol
Sorbitol
Xylitol
Acesulfame K
Alitame (Aclame)
Aspartame (NutraSweet)
Cyclamate (Sucaryl)
Neotame
Saccharin (Sweet ‘N Low)
Sucralose (Splenda)
Stevia
Monk Fruit (Luo Han Gul)
That’s it! Now you have better awareness of the names of ingredients that may not fit your low carb lifestyle. Print this list and take it along so you can hit the grocery aisles with resolve and confidence!
More
There are two companion guides with more information about navigating the grocery store and deciphering food labels. They are:
In addition, click through to our main keto foods guide, or our keto diet food list for real-food inspired grocery shopping!
For more basics, check out our simple but thorough beginner’s guide to the keto diet:
About the author
Jenni Calihan created the non-profit, Eat the Butter, to start a mother-to-mother conversation about diet and health. She advocates for real-food-more-fat eating, and has been feeding her family (four kids) for twenty years.
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