Nutritionists Say Those Keto Diet Supplements And Pills Are A Huge Scam
You've heard of the keto diet. The idea behind the wildly popular low carb, high-fat diet is to enter ketosis, a metabolic state when your body burns fat for fuel. With the trendy diet has come different programs such as the Keto 30 Challenge, which involves keeping the diet plus special supplements. Jaclyn London, MS, RD, CDN, at the Good Housekeeping Institute recently reported that such supplements and similar weight-loss pills designed to accompany the keto diet may be harmful to your health-and your wallet.
The expensive supplements, according to Good Housekeeping, are made with ingredients such as "ketones designed to suppress appetite, electrolytes for the dehydrating effects of the diet, certain vitamins and minerals, and even caffeine."
For a hefty $150, you can purchase KetoLogic's Ket0 30 Challenge Bundle, which includes one 30-serving container of BHB and two 20-serving containers of KetoMeal, and a shaker bottle. You're supposed to drink 1-2 servings of the BHB a day "to boost your energy, enhance mental clarity, and curb cravings." The KetoMeal is described as a meal replacement "made with satiating and energizing MCT oil powder."
London notes the main electrolyte you're getting in a KetoLogic or a similar supplement is sodium, which you already have in your pantry-aka, table salt. That just means you could easily get your electrolyte intake on your own (without paying $100 or more).
According to Good Housekeeping, those keto supplements could also mess with your metabolism: "When you're in a starvation state, your body uses ketones for energy in a similar way to how they're used on a ketogenic diet-for fuel-and coverts them into glucose...The higher your blood concentration of ketones, the less hungry you feel," London says. Taking supplemental ketones "will likely decrease appetite by raising blood levels of ketone bodies." When you go off the diet after a month, those appetite-suppressing hormones get much higher, so you could end up feeling hungrier than you did before you even started the diet.
KetoLogic's KetoMeal also contains MCT oils (medium-chain triglycerides), which are "fat sources that take less time to digest than the long-chain triglycerides usually found in fatty foods." MCTs go straight to your liver, and as a result, may cause digestive issues such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation.
At the end of the day "there's no need to replace meals with powders when you can instead make shifts toward healthier eating habits that promote physical, mental, and psychological well-being for life," London says. Do with it all what you will.
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