If you are mixing up Keto Chow with cold water, we recommend letting it chill for at least 20-30 minutes (preferably overnight) for best taste. This allows the flavors to develop and for the ingredients to properly dissolve (and also makes it a bit sweeter and less salty!) You won’t lose health benefits from drinking it immediately—you just may find you prefer the taste after it’s had some time to chill.

If you are preparing your Keto Chow with warm or hot water, you can drink it immediately as the ingredients will dissolve faster. You can find more information on preparing Keto Chow here.

We have a short video that explains what fats you can use.

I actually did a 100-day experiment where I didn’t eat anything BUT Keto Chow and different kinds of fats. The short version is: I like to use butter the best, then heavy cream. You can also use avocado oil, a little MCT oil, even coconut oil if you mix it the same as butter.

So, based on all that, it’s entirely up to you!

We often drink Keto Chow warm, and also frequently use it in cooking and baking. Even the Savory Soups are meant to be consumed hot/warm.

Please note that once Keto Chow reaches 120 degrees Fahrenheit or more, some of the nutrients may start to deteriorate. Even when it reaches that temperature, you will still receive excellent nutritional value, but you would not want it to be your sole source of nutrition if you consistently heat it above 120 degrees.

Chocolate is, by far, the most popular flavor.

Every so often, we publish a list of our online best sellers on our blog. You can view the most current leaderboard of our most popular flavors here.

Your Keto Chow should be good if kept chilled in the fridge for either six days, or until the fat source expires—whichever comes first. For example, if you use cream that expires in three days, you should consume that shake within three days. But if you use butter that expires in four weeks, you should consume that shake within six days.

Nope! Keto Chow was designed to provide complete nutrition so that you could live on three a day if you wanted to, but there’s no reason you have to. Many users do 1-2 Keto Chow meals a day, with keto-friendly meal(s) to provide the rest of their daily calories. You can also use it just occasionally on especially busy days—whatever works best for you.

We have some great preparation and mixing resources on our website. There are many ways to use Keto Chow:

• Mix it up one meal at a time in a BlenderBottle®.
• Prepare a couple of meals in a blender. (Try adding ice!)
• Make multiple meals at a time in a gallon-size pitcher with an immersion blender.
• Use it in a recipe
• Turn it up a notch using our awesome flavor hacks!

Keto Chow is the tastiest low-carb meal replacement shake mix on the market and is designed to support nutritional ketosis. Combine it with a fat source of your choice (like heavy cream, butter, or oil) and water. One shake provides 1/3 of your daily vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, electrolytes, and more.

In the simplest terms, a “natural” ingredient means it is derived from something found in nature. However, “natural” does not mean “better” — it’s simply a way to designate the origin. An “artificial” ingredient means that it’s created by combining compounds together. Keto Chow uses both natural and artificial ingredients, but we always prioritize health and quality.

Keto Chow is designed to provide 1/3 of what your body needs in every serving—including sodium.

In fact, many people on keto, especially as they are first starting out, don’t get enough sodium. This can result in imbalanced or low electrolytes, causing flu-like symptoms. (This is sometimes called the keto flu.) 

Many find they feel their best by adding sodium above and beyond what Keto Chow has. You can check out our other keto supplements to get the extra electrolytes you need.

Despite being viewed by some as the “bad” macro, fat is essential for your body. Even aside from its necessity in biological processes, it also plays an important role in making sure you stay full—making it less likely that you will overeat and consume extra calories. It’s what makes low-carb eating sustainable. Without enough fat to keep you full, your body will not be able to maintain this way of eating. Especially in the transition to keto, consuming extra fat helps your body learn how to burn fat for fuel instead of the carbs that it’s used to. I suggest thinking of it like this: on keto, keep carbs low, make sure you reach your recommended protein goal each day, and then add fat to satiety.

First things first: there is some confusion between “Splenda” (that you buy at the grocery store) and pure sucralose. Splenda uses bulking agents so that you can “measure it like sugar” – typically this will be 99.8% maltodextrin which is simply a carbohydrate and no good for a Ketogenic or low carb diet. The maltodextrin in store-bought Splenda will absolutely spike your blood sugar. Pure sucralose, on the other hand, will not. Even if it did have an effect on blood sugar, there is simply too little of it to have any effect. In Keto Chow, we use 0.08g per serving. To put that in perspective: that is 1/64 the weight of a US nickel. Even 0.08g of actual sugarwill only raise your blood sugar by 0.32mg/dL – essentially no effect.

You may also find people snidely referencing sucralose as “chlorinated sugar” – assuming that any form of chlorine is bad for humans. This would be ignoring Sodium Chloride (salt) and other essential chemical compounds that contain chlorine.

OK, back to the question of why we use sucralose for many of the sweet flavors of Keto Chow. The short answer is: because stevia doesn’t taste very good to the overwhelming majority of our taste testers. Ultimately, stevia, monk fruit, erythritol, or any other “natural sweeteners” are not magical and cause the same reactions in humans as anything else that’s sweet so why not use the best tasting option? We actually paid a 3rd party to do a blind taste test and they confirmed that Keto Chow with sucralose tastes “more natural” than products using Stevia, Erythritol, or Monk Fruit.

• Erythritol and Allulose would seem a good choice but they DOUBLE the weight and volume of Keto Chow, instead of 21 meals you’d get 10 for the same price and shipping. That sucks.
• Keto Chow CORE is available with either NO sweetener (add your own!) or with Stevia
• We do have the “Natural Strawberry” that does use monk fruit instead of sucralose. It costs more to produce and doesn’t taste as good (in my opinion).
• We have the “Base Powder” version which you combine with your choice of flavored/sweetened protein powder – lets you use whatever you’d like. Want to use egg white protein with Stevia? Go for it! You’ll still get all of the vitamins and minerals you’d normally get with Keto Chow.
• We have 4 savory soup flavors (you mix them hot!) that do not use any sweetener, because that would be gross.

Allow me to quote Julie from the Keto Villiage Facebook group – she illustrates why we use sucralose really well:

Holy what the hell. Go buy Keto Chow. It is NO joke. I am not a packaged foods kinda gal but needed something to get me back on the Keto track. I was thinking, honestly, “ok, I can choke this down for a couple weeks.” Um. NOT EVEN CLOSE. This shiz is delicious!!! And easy to make! Holy wow!
I bought both the peanut butter chocolate and the raspberry cheesecake. I blended 1/2 c heavy cream and 1/2 cup coconut milk with ice with a scoop of chow. Thick like a milkshake. No weird malt “slim fast” taste.

(Chris here) I personally use Keto Chow for at least 2 meals a day, often 3. Instead of something that I have to suffer through, I want something so delectable that I’m sad when I run out. It should taste so good that I swish it around in my mouth, enjoying the flavor; not plugging my nose and chugging it as fast as possible. And I won’t sell something that’s gross or barely tolerable. It’s gotta be delightful and that’s what you get with sucralose: the best flavor possible. A meal replacement that doesn’t taste AMAZING isn’t helpful in its intended use.

What about the rat studies showing changes in gut bacteria when exposed to sucralose? Humans are not rats. Those rats weren’t consuming acacia gum. Those rats weren’t on a ketogenic diet. Even more important, is the DOSE that the rats received. The dosage is usually expressed in mg/Kg or how many milligrams of sucralose were given per Kilogram of body weight. In the US, it was estimated (top of page 3) that most people consume 98mg of sucralose per day resulting in a dose of 1.6mg/Kg. In a recent study to determine the effects of sucralose, the rats were given an average of 80.4 mg/kg. Let’s see how that compares to what *you* would get by consuming Keto Chow: Let’s assume a 180lb person, they would need to consume 82 meals of Keto Chow *A DAY* in order to get the level of exposure in that rat study. If you measure in KG the math gets really easy, a 75kg person would need 75 meals.

The Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) level for sucralose was set at 5 mg/kg body weight per day (mg/kg/d) (page 10) in the US and 15 mg/kg/d in the EU. So you’d only be close to that using Keto Chow if you do it 3x a day and weigh 100lbs/45kg.

In a study published in May 2021, researchers exposed different bacteria to 3 artificial sweeteners (saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame) in Petri dishes (“in vitro”) and then measured their growth, how they formed colonies, and how effectively they can attack mammal intestinal cells. Of the 3 sweeteners tested, Keto Chow only uses pure sucralose. Saccharin modified bacterial growth and all 3 made it easier for the bacteria to form biofilms and to attack intestinal cells. Again, this was under laboratory conditions, not in living organisms – it also didn’t have the added benefits of acacia gum which are likely to erase all of the potential issues found.

One of the very interesting aspects of the study was the researchers also tested what would happen if a compound (zinc sulfate) that blocks sweet tastes was added. Adding this compound changed how the bacteria reacted, based on my reading of the study, that would indicate that it is sweetness causing many of the changes. If this is indeed the cause, that would likely indicate that ALL sweet substances would similarly affect the bacteria, including: stevia, monk fruit, sugar alcohols (like erythritol, allulose, xylitol, etc…), and regular plain sugar.

Unfortunately, the researchers stopped short of testing the logical next step which would be using “natural” sweeteners (including stevia, monk fruit, and actual sugar) as a control to contrast against, they only tested the 3 artificial sweeteners against no sweetener. Because there isn’t a legitimate control in the experiment, it’s currently not possible to derive any conclusions about whether artificial sweeteners cause substantially different results in humans compared to other sweet compounds. This is one of the reasons why it’s important that you not rely on the “news” version that’s been enhanced with incendiary headlines but actually read the full text of the published papers.

Similarly, there was a study in 2013 where researchers gave obese, insulin-sensitive individuals, who did not typically use sucralose, stevia, or monk-fruit either water or sucralose; then gave them 75g of glucose and measured their blood sugar response. The study notes that there are many non-nutritive sweeteners (sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, neotame, stevia, and mon fruit) but they only tested sucralose. In fact, the study says “it has been demonstrated that the gastrointestinal tract (4,5) and the pancreas (6,7) can detect sugars through taste receptors and transduction mechanisms that are similar to those identified in taste cells in the mouth.” – that would indicate that monk fruit, stevia, allulose, etc… would be expected to have the same result as sucralose, since they are (plain and simple) sweet!”

In 2023 a study was published where the researchers looked at a form of sucralose called “sucralose-6-acetate” which they found at typical concentrations of 0.5% in samples of pure sucralose. They performed a number of experiments where they tested sucralose-6-acetate in different concentrations and saw what it did to cells and DNA. They found that high concentrations caused changes in gene expression, intestinal barrier function (but only without typical intestinal bacteria), and breaks in DNA. The LOWEST concentration that problems were observed was at 353 micrograms per milliliter. Assuming their figure of 0.5% and taking a 0.08g dose of sucralose in a 600ml serving of Keto Chow, that would calculate to a theoretical 0.667 micrograms per milliliter in Keto Chow, that is 0.18% of the lowest experiment concentration that showed problems – or the experiment was 529.5 times higher than what is found in Keto Chow.

We do not recommend increasing the sweetener in Keto Chow by 529 times. That would be silly.

Depending on the flavor, Keto Chow uses either milk protein isolate or beef protein and beef bone broth. You can find the amino acid profiles for those on the Keto Chow nutrition page.

There are nine “essential” amino acids. Meaning, your body can’t synthesize them: phenylalanine, valine, threonine, tryptophan, methionine, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, and histidine. You can find all nine in both protein-types of Keto Chow.

Some plant-based spices, like cinnamon and cocoa powder, contain enough lead to trigger a “reproductive harm” proposition 65 warning (if you consume 1000 times the amount it can cause birth defects). The flavors of Keto Chow that contain these spices (along with any food product that contains these spices) are required to have a Prop 65 warning. You can get more details about Keto Chow and heavy metal levels on this page.

Yep! Check out our Keto Chow Core line and Base Powder.