Eating Keto on the Go

Hey Everyone,

As you know—or, as I hope is pretty obvious—something I try to use my blog for is helping people see how simple low carb and ketogenic diets can be. When we stick with basic principles and get out of our own way, these ways of eating are very straightforward and uncomplicated. There’s not a whole lot of weighing, measuring, tracking, and rules involved. Yes, you can fall down all those rabbit holes and make yourself as fully neurotic as your heart desires, but for those of us who have bigger concerns in our lives than how many grams of omega-6 fat a chicken leg contains, the beauty of low carb and keto is their simplicity.

Awhile back, I offered some suggestions for dining out while adhering to a reduced carb way of eating. Today, let’s take that a step further and talk about how to stay keto while you’re on the road or on the go. What if you’re in the car for a few hours, or maybe even just a short trip, and the hunger monster attacks?

One approach is to think of it as an opportunity to skip a meal or two. I don’t consider skipping meals to be “fasting,” but if thinking of it as intermittent fasting makes you feel like you have special superpowers, then go right ahead. Going longer between meals is a nice way to keep insulin low and “eat” your own stored body fat more than you might if you immediately chowed down on something as soon as a few mild hunger pangs hit.

However, if you’re having a “hangry” moment—and let’s face it, folks, sometimes these still happen even when you’re a “fat burning beast” and are fat- or keto-adapted—then maybe you’re better off pulling into the nearest gas station or convenience store and foraging for some low-carb provisions. (What, you don’t feel hangry on keto? Like, ever? Okay, maybe it’s just me.) 

Here are my suggestions for low carb and keto-friendly foods you can grab in a hurry from gas stations and convenience stores. (We’ll get to supermarkets in a bit, since there are more choices there.) These apply to North America…I’m not sure if convenience stores like this exist on other continents, but I’m guessing you have something similar in other parts of the world. I’ll also tack on suggestions for things to keep in your desk or cubicle if you have an office job and have a place nearby to stash non-perishables.

Food purists, avert your eyes. If you can’t imagine letting anything past your lips that isn’t grass-fed, organic, pastured, small-batch, or biodynamic, this post isn’t for you. (In fact, my entire blog probably isn’t for you, but you’re welcome to stick around anyway.) We’re talking about foods to grab in a pinch, when the highest quality and ethically unassailable stuff might not be available. I’m totally okay with that. If you’re not, that’s fine; I still like ya!

Gas Stations or Convenience Stores

• Pork rinds (plain might be best, but if you’re not a purist, hot & spicy or salt & vinegar flavors are fine; they typically contain little to no sugar but might be seasoned with MSG, yeast extract, maltodextrin, etc. Even so, the carb count is usually 0g per serving.)
• Beef jerky or meat sticks (stick to original or peppered flavors; teriyaki and BBQ are typically higher in sugar)
• String cheese; cheese sticks
• Salami or pepperoni slices or sticks
• Hard boiled eggs
• Nuts (avoid honey-roasted and nut mixes that include dried fruit)
• Dark chocolate (the higher the cocoa percentage, the lower the sugar content, usually)

Beverages: water, diet sodas, hot or iced tea (unsweetened or diet with artificial sweetener), coffee (hot or iced, unsweetened or diet with artificial sweetener—be careful with pre-made iced coffee; it’s usually sweetened with sugar). Pretty much anything that’s sugar-free. This isn’t rocket science, people! 

Supermarket

If you have time to go up an aisle or two in a supermarket, you’ll have a wider selection to choose from. Here are some great go-tos from a supermarket run on the road:

• Pork rinds (with or without sour cream dip or guacamole)
• Beef jerky
• Sliced pepperoni, salami, or dry sausage sticks
• Nuts or nut butter
• Pre-cooked bacon (yes, this is a thing!)
• Deli meats and/or cheese: roast beef, corned beef, and pastrami are probably the lowest in sugar, but baked or roasted turkey is fine; avoid or go easy on “honey baked” or “brown sugar” ham or turkey. Salami, prosciutto, mortadella, and other cured meats are great.
• Pre-made egg salad or tuna salad from the deli (ask about ingredients and sugar content)
• Rotisserie chicken
• Canned tuna, salmon, sardines, or mackerel – be sure to buy ones with a pop-top unless you have a can opener handy
• Hard boiled eggs
• Bagged salad greens
• Raspberries or strawberries (and maybe a small container of sour cream or plain yogurt for dipping)
• Salad bar, olive or antipasto bar – many supermarkets now have salad or antipasto bars stocked with fabulous low-carb fare: olives, cheese, artichoke hearts, bell peppers, marinated mushrooms, sliced or chopped hard boiled egg, turkey, grilled chicken, sunflower seeds, sliced almonds, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, radishes, etc.  

If you like to live on the edge and are not afraid of eating unwashed produce, you can hit up the produce section and get low-carb vegetables like a cucumber, green bell pepper, radishes, button mushrooms, celery, etc., and just eat them raw. There is zero wrong with this!

Desk Drawer or Cubicle

Lots of flexibility here! You can practically have a supermarket of nonperishables at your fingertips if you have room to store a few things. Keep in mind, however, that if you’re prone to snacking when food is in your immediate vicinity even if you’re not hungry, you might be better off not keeping a keto stash handy. Do what’s right for you.

For those of you who want to have a keto cache at your disposal during the workday, consider the following:

• Pork rinds
• Beef jerky
• Pepperoni or any other cured meats that don’t require refrigeration until opened
• Nuts and/or nut butters (careful here if these are trigger foods for you)
• Jar of coconut, olive, or avocado oil
• Canned tuna, salmon, sardines, mackerel
• Dessicated/dried coconut flakes or chips (unsweetened)
• Your favorite vinegars (can be combined with the oils to make a vinaigrette for a lunch salad)
• Hot sauce (doesn’t need to be refrigerated, since it’s vinegar-based)
• Dark chocolate

Depending on your level of “keto purity,” consider keeping Quest bars, Adapt bars, or other low and low-ish carb products on hand.

Pro Tips

If you’re a salesperson, company rep, parent, or someone else who spends a lot of time in the car, consider keeping a supply of the following essentials in your trunk. (Also good to keep at the office.) It does no good to buy some of the foods above to eat on the go if you have no way of eating them without making a mess. Tuck a small box in the trunk and stock it with:

• Can opener
• Plastic or metal utensils
• Napkins or paper towels
• Paper plates or bowls (or use plastic containers, wash them at home or in your hotel room, and reuse)

Did I miss anything you consider a staple for when you’re on the go? (Besides, of course, a container of homemade food or leftovers! To be honest, this is really the best way to go if you're a cook. Always make enough to have some left over to spare for another meal or snack. [Tips on that here.])

Disclaimer: Amy Berger, MS, CNS, NTP, is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition and is not to be used as a substitute for the care and guidance of a physician. Links in this post and all others may direct you to amazon.com, where I will receive a small amount of the purchase price of any items you buy through my affiliate links.

Low Carb Cooking Class! (LC3) -- Herbs & Spices (And Ground Meat "With Stuff")

Class is back in session!

In the previous post, we explored three things that professional chefs use prodigiously, but which are woefully underutilized in the home kitchen: salt, heat, and acid. I alluded to a fourth thing, but said we would explore it in a separate post. Well, this is that post. In case you missed the previous posts, we’ve covered why I’m writing this series, how to stock your freezer, fridge, and pantry with low carb staples to make cooking a breeze, and tips for using some of those staples for cooking in advance or in bulk. Like I covered in the intro post, my goal is to show newbies out there (and old hands who need a reminder) just how easy it is to stay on a low carb plan. No detailed meal plans needed, and no shopping lists that rival blueprints for the International Space Station. When you keep certain items on hand, and you know what to do with them, you don’t need to plan what you’re having for lunch three weeks from now.

Today’s lesson: herbs & spices -- and a tasty one-pan meal that couldn't be easier.

Low Carb Cooking Class! (LC3) - Kitchen Prep

Class is in session!

Welcome to the second installment of Low Carb Cooking Class, a.k.a. LC³.

As I explained in the intro post, we’re starting things off with what is probably the most important lesson: how to stock your kitchen so that you can have delicious low carb meals ready quickly and with no need for advance planning. I realize that, as a single and childless individual, my notions of how simple it is to prepare food is approximately seventeen million lightyears away from what moms and/or dads of large families experience. That being said, I still have never understood some people’s certainty that they are incapable of sticking to a certain type of diet—be it Paleo, low-carb, keto, or anything else—without a “meal plan.” Even the phrase “meal plan” makes me cringe. It’s as bad as nails on a chalkboard for me.

I refuse to do meal plans for clients. I’m sorry, but you are a grown adult and I am not going to tell you what to have for lunch three Tuesdays from now. What I will do, and love to do, is show people how easy it is to stay low carb without a meal plan. (As they say, instead of cooking a fish for someone, I prefer to teach them to fish.) When you have a basic understanding of what to cook and how to cook it, you don’t need an instruction manual. (I did say this isn’t rocket science, yes?)

BUT: The thing is, even if you know what to cook and how to cook it, you can’t cook it if you don’t have it. So that’s what today’s post is about: what to keep on hand in your kitchen so that, when it’s mealtime and the house (or your life in general) is in chaos, the one thing you won’t have to stress over is what to make for dinner. (Or breakfast or lunch.)

Food for Thought Friday: Pay the Farmer Now, or Pay the Doctor ... When, Exactly?

When well-meaning acquaintances mock us for spending more money than they do for food, those of us who take pride in buying, cooking, and eating whole, unprocessed, real foods are fond of saying, “Pay the farmer now, or pay the doctor later.” Meaning, if people don’t pony up a little extra cash for better quality food now, they’ll end up paying even more in the future, in the form of medical bills. But is this actually true? If people spend decades putting garbage down their pieholes and end up with some of the “diseases of civilization,” do they really end up all that much worse off, financially?

For the sake of keeping this post to a somewhat reasonable length, let’s stick solely to the financial burden of diet- and lifestyle-induced illness, and we’ll table the “cost” of missed work time, fatigue, illness, chronic pain, and overall reduced quality of life for another time. (But let’s go ahead and acknowledge that these other issues are arguably more important than one’s bank account balance.)

Label Madness Monday: Buttery Spreads, Take 2

It’s that time again, kids. The start of another work week, and a new adventure in food label land. A couple posts back, we looked at a buttery spread whose very name implies it is “Simply Delicious,” even though we made mincemeat out of that claim pretty easily. I left off at the end of that post saying we’d come back and take a look at some even wackier imitation butter spreads, and I’m making good on that today.

First up: Smart Balance “dairy free butter” with omega-3s.

Label Madness Monday: Et tu, BBQ? (Or: How to Eat at a BBQ Joint Without Wrecking Yourself)

I love me some good BBQ!

Set before me some nice sliced brisket or a pile of pulled pork and I’m in hog heaven. (Pun intended.) However, depending on what you order, barbecue joints can be a low-carb/Paleo paradise, or they can be a total blood sugar nightmare.

If you’re watching your carbohydrate intake, you already know to steer clear of the cornbread, baked beans, mac & cheese, and the cheap-o bread they usually stick under whatever meat you order in order to sop up the juices. (Confession: Sometimes I eat this bread, ‘cuz, really, what a waste of yummy meat drippings! I also eat the cornbread sometimes, ‘cuz…well, it’s a bit of a weakness.)

That’s the obvious stuff, though. What about things that are harder to avoid at a BBQ place, like the delicious sauces they use to marinate, baste, and slather your food with before serving it to you? BBQ sauce is a sneaky source of large amounts of sugar. (And by “sugar,” I mean cane sugar, molasses, honey, corn syrup, corn starch, and more.) Let’s take a look at a couple of examples from a popular restaurant chain, Famous Dave’s®. (I am a big fan of this place, and am absolutely not writing this to bash it. I only want to point out the ingredients in the sauces and help us make informed choices, wherever we eat.)

Label Madness Monday: This is Nuts!

Welcome to the latest installment in our ongoing series of food label exposés! (It’s dirty work, but somebody’s gotta do it.)

On the menu today: dry roasted peanuts.

Sounds simple enough, right? Dry. Roasted. Peanuts. To me, this means two things: peanuts, and a heat source. (The “dry roasting” implies, at least to me, that no oil is added. You’ll sometimes see “peanuts and peanut oil” or “peanuts and cottonseed and/or canola and/or peanut oil” in the ingredient list of roasted peanuts that are not “dry” roasted.)

Okay, here goes.

Label Madness Monday: It's So Simple...

It’s time for another round of food label smackdown, folks!

If you’re on the edge of your seat waiting for the next post in the cancer series, get a bigger seat and scoot back for a bit. I’ve been working on a big project and am falling a little behind on those cancer deep-dives. But fear not; I definitely haven’t forgotten about them and there will be more...eventually. In the meantime, let’s take a look at something as “simple” as the vegetable oil spreads that have been masquerading as butter for the past few decades.

First up: “Deliciously Simple,” by the food chemists who bring you I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!® (The company employing these food chemists is Unilever, the same company that brings you all these other non-foods and edible food-like products.

Let’s see just how “simple” this product is:

Label Madness Monday

It’s been a while since we took a look at a food label and had ourselves a laugh. And lest this blog become nothing but book reviews, rants, and super-nerdy posts about cancer, I figured now might be a good time to resurrect good ol’ Label Madness Monday. So here goes.

Today’s an easy one. For those of you in the U.S., it’ll probably just make you chuckle. To those of you outside the U.S., let this be a lesson in the complete and total ridiculousness that rules food labeling laws in our whacked-out country. Land of the free, home of the brave, and slave to the almighty marketing dollar preying upon the complete idiocy of the majority of the population.

Here goes: Fat-free, sugar-free, non-dairy coffee creamer.

Label Madness Monday: Why 100-Calorie Packs Piss Me Off

All right, dear readers, be honest with me: am I the only person who thinks these things are totally, completely, and utterly ridiculous?

They’re convenient. I get that. And as long as you have access to just one 100-calorie pack, they take willpower out of the equation. I get that, too.

I’m not saying the concept is ridiculous, just the way it’s executed.

My infuriation over these things is fourfold:

1. They’re wasteful.
2. They’re expen$ive. (No, really, like crazy expensive.)
3. They assume we consumers are too lazy or too stupid to divvy out reasonable portions on our own. (Unfortunately, I think they may be on to something here, but in my heart of hearts, I’d like to give the American public more credit than that, and I’m not the only one.)
4. They’re just plain ridiculous.

May I Recommend...

Haven’t posted anything since the last week of May. Show of hands: who missed me? (*Crickets.* As I suspected…) But just in case you think I’ve been sitting on my duff doing nothing in my blogging absence, the truth is, I’ve been staring at the wall for hours, pondering my life hard at work on a super-special project I will tell you about when the time is right. (And no, that is not a marketing ploy to get you to buy something when it debuts, because, frankly, I am a total and complete moron when it comes to whoring out selling stuff and making a living at this.) So anyway, it might be a little bit before I hit my blogging stride again, but for now, I wanted to give you a couple of cheese suggestions, ‘cuz hey, who doesn’t want to try some awesome new cheeses?

Financial Food Facts at the Farm

In some of the posts in my series on food labels, I’ve pointed out how expensive processed foods are. Manufacturers generally start with raw materials that are extremely inexpensive for them (thanks to our tax dollars, which subsidize corn, wheat, and soy), and after tinkering with these simple inputs—usually by adding sugar, corn syrup, and artificial colorings and transforming them into things like cereal, granola bars, protein shakes and bars, and the like—they jack up the price by multiple orders of magnitude. In other words, like I showed in the oatmeal post, they start with an input that they can sell for less than a dollar a pound, and after adding a ton of sugar and some spices, they turn around and charge over twelve dollars.

People who are unfamiliar with buying and preparing whole, unprocessed foods often use the excuse that foods like meat, pork, poultry, and seafood are too expensive. This can be especially true if we’re talking about very good quality foods, from animals that were raised humanely, on species-appropriate diets. (As I’ve pointed out in the past, this means cows eating grass or dried hay; chickens and hens eating grain-based feed but also pecking around in the grass for the grubs, worms, and insects that make egg yolks so nutritious; and pigs foraging for just about anything they can cram down their little piggy pieholes.) I would argue that compared to commodity crop-based processed foods, regular ol’ conventional meat, dairy, and other foods you can find at the supermarket are not expensive at all. I’ve seen red meat and pork chops on sale for as little as $2.99/pound, and boneless skinless chicken breasts regularly go on sale for $1.99/pound. (Not that you’re eating those, right? Talk about boring, bland, and blah.)

But for people making a transition to “the real deal” in terms of grassfed meats, pastured poultry and all that jazz, the prices aren’t quite that low. That said, they’re not as high as you might think, either.