Keto snacks – the best and the worst
, medical review by Dr. Michael Tamber, MD
Evidence basedAre you hungry on your keto diet, but your next meal is hours away? A keto snack may be the answer. Snacks can buy you some time, allowing you to delay meals to fit your busy schedule.
Snacking shouldn’t happen every day, though. In fact, ideally, you shouldn’t feel the need to snack at all.1 A major benefit of keto is that it often prevents hunger for hours after meals.2 If you regularly need to snack, try adding more protein to your meals, with more calories from fat if needed.3
For the times you occasionally need a snack, check out the great keto options below, along with some common snacking mistakes to avoid.
Easy keto whole foods
The numbers below the snacks are the digestible carbohydrates, or net carbs.5 For example, 100 grams of avocado (3.5 ounces) contains 2 grams of net carbs.
A slice of cheese, a few olives, some fatty cold cuts, or a few slices of bacon make excellent keto snacks.
Or choose a small portion of nuts that are very low in carbs, like macadamia nuts, pecans or Brazil nuts (be careful of cashews.)
A hard-boiled egg is another ideal keto snack. Try it with mayo, cream cheese, a keto dip, or butter.67
Read more about the health benefits of eggs in our evidence-based guide.
Keto snack recipes
Cook up some keto snacks at home so you’ll have tasty choices easily on hand. Below are six popular options, with net carbs per serving shown in the green circle.
Top 6
Keto veggies and dip
Vegetable sticks: Snack freely on the lowest-carb vegetables.8 Carrots are a bit higher in carbs, so keep portion sizes modest in order to stay within your daily carb limit.9
Dip: What goes great with veggies? Cream cheese, sour cream or a savory high-fat dipping sauce. Here are a few popular options:
Top 6
Keto berries and cream
Heavy whipping cream: For a decadent treat, put a dollop of whipped heavy cream on top of your berries, without adding any sugar or sweeteners.10 Let the natural flavors shine through.
Be careful, though — berries with cream are so delicious that you may end up eating more than you need, which could stall weight loss.
Here are a couple of keto berry recipes to try:
Chocolate
Net carbs per 100 grams (3.5 ounces).
One square of 86% chocolate has 2 grams of net carbs. One square of 70% chocolate has 3.5 grams of net carbs. Shaving a square of 70% or 86% chocolate over whipped cream makes a little go a long way.
Other keto snacks
Pork rinds: Also called cracklings, chicharrones, or pork crisps, these are a great zero-carb treat when you want something salty and crunchy.12 Artisanal pork rinds — increasingly being made by keto entrepreneurs — are superior in taste to the commercial packaged product.
Beef jerky: Reading the nutrition label can help you choose the best option, as many commercial brands contain sugar and other additives. Although most have at least 9 grams of net carbs per 100 grams, a few are fairly low carb. Many people make their own.
Biltong: A South African dried, spiced meat usually made of beef, venison or ostrich. It typically has no sugar and is just meat marinated in salt, spices, and vinegar for a number of days, then dried. You can make it at home.
Keto chips
Cheese
Milk coffees: Cafe lattes and cappuccinos have lots of carbs from lactose (milk sugar). A 16-oz (470-ml) latte has 18 grams of carbs; when made with skim milk, it has 19 grams. Drink coffee black or with a little milk or cream. Or for a higher-fat option, try one of our hot keto drinks.
Juice, regular sports drinks and vitamin waters: Full of sugar. Do not drink.13
Fruit: Nature’s candy.14 While berries are fine from time to time, avoid other higher-carb fruits. For instance, one small banana has 20 grams of carbs — an entire day’s worth on a keto diet.
For the best options, see our keto fruits guide.
Cashews: The high-carb nut. Choose macadamias, pecans or other lower-carb nuts from our keto nuts guide.
Carbs list
Note: Carbohydrate information for beverages is provided in common serving sizes rather than per 100 grams:
Horrible choices
Common snack foods like chips, nachos, donuts, candy and chocolate bars aren’t a good choice for your health or your waistline.15 Do not eat them on a keto diet.
But here is the great news: a keto diet can often reduce and sometimes even put an end to cravings for these foods.16
A word of warning: be wary of “keto” or “low-carb” versions of cakes, cookies, chocolate bars, candies, ice cream and other sweets. They might maintain cravings for a sugary taste and can make you eat more than you need, causing weight loss to slow or stall.
Carbs list
Even more keto snack options
Quick bites
Sometimes you just want a little something to delay lunch or dinner. Consider a quick combination:
- Slice of cheese with celery, cucumber, radish, or wrapped in lettuce
- Celery filled with cream cheese, natural peanut butter, brie or other soft cheese
- Slice of cheese spread with butter and rolled up
- Cucumber or lettuce spread with mayo
- Parmesan crisps spread with butter
- Slice of salami and cheese, rolled up together
- Slice of bacon spread with peanut butter
- Spoonful of butter, ghee, or coconut oil melted into coffee or tea
More keto recipes
Looking for something crunchy and tasty to serve friends who are coming over? Our many recipes for delicious keto snacks will give you lots of choices. Even friends who aren’t keto will want the recipe.
Packaged keto snacks on the go
Maybe you’re traveling. (If so, check out our guide to low-carb travel.) Maybe you need something in your desk for those nights when you’re stuck at the office. Maybe you’re carpooling to soccer practice when you should be eating dinner.
Whatever the reason, you need shelf-stable, keto-friendly food.
Check the macros of these packaged snacks to see if they suit your personal regimen.
We’ve included links to some of these snacks solely for your convenience. Diet Doctor will not benefit from your purchases.17
- Olive snack packs: green, black, or a variety pack.
- Epic Meat bars: chicken sriracha and pulled pork.
- Cooked bacon
- Salami bites
- Coconut chips
- Parmesan crisps
- Pork rinds
- Macadamia nuts (or pecans or Brazil nuts)
- Pili nuts (the world’s lowest-carb nut)
- Really dark chocolate (85% or more)
So whether you snack on our oven-baked brie cheese at home or a bag of pork rinds in the car, keep it keto and reinforce your healthy choices for a healthy lifestyle.
Finally, sometimes the best snack is a bite or two of yesterday’s dinner. With that in mind, for even more inspiration, please see all of our keto recipes.
More
Want more? Living keto goes beyond recipes. Enjoy our selection of guides to help you understand keto and keep it deliciously simple.
Visual guides
Vegetables 
Fruits 
Nuts 
Alcohol 
Fats & sauces 
Drinks 
How many carbs? 
Sweeteners 
Dairy
More
Keto snacks – the best and the worst - the evidence
This guide is written by Jennifer Calihan, Dr. Michael Tamber, MD and was last updated on December 8, 2022.
All our evidence-based health guides are written or reviewed by medical doctors who are experts on the topic. To stay unbiased we show no ads, sell no physical products, and take no money from the industry. We're fully funded by the people, via an optional membership. Most information at Diet Doctor is free forever.
Read more about our policies and work with evidence-based guides, nutritional controversies, our editorial team, and our medical review board.
Should you find any inaccuracy in this guide, please email andreas@dietdoctor.com.
There’s a lack of solid evidence that snacking or eating more than three times a day has any health benefits, and it may be counterproductive for weight loss or metabolic issues:
Diabetologia 2014: Eating two larger meals a day (breakfast and lunch) is more effective than six smaller meals in a reduced-energy regimen for patients with type 2 diabetes: a randomised crossover study [moderate evidence]
British Journal of Nutrition 2010: Increased meal frequency does not promote greater weight loss in subjects who were prescribed an 8-week equi-energetic energy-restricted diet [moderate evidence]
Hepatology 2014: Hypercaloric diets with increased meal frequency, but not meal size, increase intrahepatic triglycerides: a randomized controlled trial [moderate evidence]
PLOS One 2012: Effects of meal frequency on metabolic profiles and substrate partitioning in lean healthy males [moderate evidence]
Obesity (Silver Spring) 2012: Effects of manipulating eating frequency during a behavioral weight loss intervention: a pilot randomized controlled trial [moderate evidence]
British Journal of Nutrition 1997: Meal frequency and energy balance [overview article]
↩Keto diets often reduce feelings of hunger:
Obesity Reviews 2014: Do ketogenic diets really suppress appetite? A systematic review and meta-analysis [strong evidence]
Obesity 2007: The effects of a low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet and a low-fat diet on mood, hunger, and other self-reported symptoms [moderate evidence] ↩
Make sure that your diet is based on nutritious whole keto foods and contains enough protein. Adding extra calories from fat can also help you feel full on a keto diet.
Eating enough protein might be even more satisfying than fat:
Advances in Nutrition 2015: Controversies surrounding high-protein diet intake: Satiating effect and kidney and bone health [overview article] ↩
Some modern reviews have found that clinical trial evidence does not support the conventional wisdom that reducing dietary fat intake decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, older reviews have suggested that there is a small but statistically significant relationship between fat intake and cardiovascular disease.
At Diet Doctor, we believe that, in the context of a whole-foods-based low-carb or keto diet, overall metabolic health is likely to improve, likely mitigating or negating any potential cardiovascular risk of fat intake.
In addition, the data supporting a risk to eating fat have such low hazard ratios, that it makes it unlikely to represent an individually significant difference.
Open Heart 2016: Evidence from randomised controlled trials does not support current dietary fat guidelines: a systematic review and meta-analysis [strong evidence]
Read more in our guide to saturated fat. ↩
Net carbs = total carbs minus fiber ↩
We hesitate slightly to recommend commercial mayo. The reason is that most brands are highly processed and made with high omega-6 oils (like soybean, safflower, sunflower, or cottonseed oils). Learn more ↩
Do you worry about saturated fats or cholesterol in eggs? While still a bit controversial, some modern systematic reviews find no benefit to avoiding saturated fats or replacing them with unsaturated fats:
Open Heart 2016: Evidence from randomised controlled trials does not support current dietary fat guidelines: a systematic review and meta-analysis [strong evidence]
Nutrition Journal 2017: The effect of replacing saturated fat with mostly n-6 polyunsaturated fat on coronary heart disease: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials [strong evidence]
Here’s a study investigating if eating eggs for breakfast every day has any negative effects on cholesterol levels. They found none, and the egg-eating group reported greater satiety:
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2015: The effect of a high-egg diet on cardiovascular risk factors in people with type 2 diabetes: the Diabetes and Egg (DIABEGG) study-a 3-mo randomized controlled trial [moderate evidence] ↩
Vegetables are generally considered very healthy:
British Medical Journal 2014: Fruit and vegetable consumption and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer: systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies [weak evidence for a modest positive effect of eating vegetables on heart health and longevity]
Read more in our detailed guide, Do you need to eat fruits and vegetables?
↩We define a keto diet as having less than 20 grams of net carbs per day, though some find they are able to achieve and maintain ketosis with slightly more carbs.
This is mainly based on the consistent experience of experienced practitioners, and stories from people trying different levels of carb restriction [weak evidence].
↩Even zero-calorie sweeteners may have some negative effects, including maintaining a preference for sweet tastes and increased food reward. This can contribute to cravings and increase the risk of overeating. This is mainly based on clinical experience [weak evidence].
There is also one RCT study showing weight loss from avoiding artificial sweeteners:
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2015: Effects on weight loss in adults of replacing diet beverages with water during a hypoenergetic diet: a randomized, 24-wk clinical trial [moderate evidence]
For more, check out our guide to keto sweeteners or have a look at these additional references:
International Journal of Obesity 2017: Effects of aspartame-, monk fruit-, stevia- and sucrose-sweetened beverages on postprandial glucose, insulin and energy intake [randomized trial; moderate evidence]
Physiology & Behavior 2016: Recent studies of the effects of sugars on brain systems involved in energy balance and reward: relevance to low calorie sweeteners [overview article; ungraded]
PLOS Medicine 2017: Artificially sweetened beverages and the response to the global obesity crisis [overview article; ungraded] ↩
Too much chocolate is likely to take you over 20 grams of net carbs per day, the typical limit on a keto diet. Whether you need to stay below this limit is of course up to you. ↩
Like other salty, crunchy snacks (such as nuts) they are very rewarding to eat, and thus easy to overeat, which may slow down weight loss. Enjoy, but be aware of this. ↩
American Journal of Public Health 2012: Reducing childhood obesity by eliminating 100% fruit juice [overview article]
Zero-sugar sports drinks and vitamin waters may be OK to consume, but read the label to check the carb count. ↩
Research shows that whether people go on a low-carb or a low-fat diet, they tend to lose weight as long as they minimize sugar and refined flours in their diet:
JAMA 2018: Effect of low-fat vs low-carbohydrate diet on 12-month weight loss in overweight adults and the association with genotype pattern or insulin secretion [moderate evidence] (analysis)
Here are more studies and overview articles showing a connection between sugar, excess weight and disease:
JAMA Internal Medicine 2014: Added sugar intake and cardiovascular diseases mortality among US adults [weak evidence]
Nutrition & Metabolism 2005: Fructose, insulin resistance, and metabolic dyslipidemia [overview article]
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2007: Potential role of sugar (fructose) in the epidemic of hypertension, obesity and the metabolic syndrome, diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease [overview article]
↩The following RCT showed reduced cravings for high carb/high sugar foods, as well as reduced hunger, in low-carb eaters compared to low-fat eaters.
Obesity 2011: Change in food cravings, food preferences, and appetite during a low-carbohydrate and low-fat diet [randomized trial; moderate evidence]
This is most likely caused by avoiding the foods that stimulate these cravings, many of which are processed foods full of sugar and/or other refined carbohydrates.
[clinical experience, weak evidence]
In the case of the keto diet, it may also be that the hunger-reducing effect is helpful:
Obesity Reviews 2014: Do ketogenic diets really suppress appetite? A systematic review and meta-analysis [strong evidence] ↩
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