I was at Expo West this weekend seeing all the new brands and upcoming products from big brands, etc. It was massive this year.
I’m strict keto and walked the entire show looking for fun keto products. I’m happy to report there were a lot of good things I found. Among my favorite was a new wrap that is <1 carb made out of egg whites. It was resilient and can be used for sandwiches, potstickers, spring rolls, egg rolls, etc. It was mild but good tasting and was exactly what you want it to be: a very low carb carrier. Is definitely something I would buy as I could see it being a pain to make myself. Won’t be coming out till end of the year unfortunately.
For any Zevia drinkers, a new line is coming from Virgil’s (of root beer fame) that is sweetened with erythritoI, monk fruit, AND stevia. I do love Zevia, and Virgil’s new 0 Sugar line was significantly better! (So much better than their existing 0 sugar root beer.) I tried all their flavors, and they were all good. Zevia has some weak flavors, and my favorites (root/ginger beer and black cherry) weren’t as good as Virgil’s. Coming April/May they said. Awesome stuff. They had Lemon/Lime, Orange, Root Beer, Vanilla Cream, Cola, and Black Cherry. I hope to see them succeed as it’s better than Zevia, but they may be too late. Zevia is dominating and has like $300M in sales these days. Zevia’s booth was MASSIVE and hoppin’.
Lakanto had some new products. Chocolate Syrup is coming in a couple months, it was really good and 1 net carb per tablespoon. A little too sweet, but a nice indulgence when you want it. I was surprised to see it served on Rebel Creamery’s pre-production ice cream! Of course it was delicious and creamy, and the container says it will be only 5 net carbs in an entire pint. Around 1 per serving! Whoa! I hope they can get into stores.
I also loved seeing pork rinds in several places. My favorite were from Bacon’s Heir. Their Pork Clouds had the best, clean label seasonings. No maltodextrin. Beware the cinnamon flavor has sugar, but they said they’re changing it to a sugar substitute, like monk fruit.
I was happy to find a few jerkys here and there with no added sugar. It’s hard to find those in stores. My favorite was the Chomps brand, Jalapeno flavor. Awesome flavor profile with 0 sugar: the way jerky should be!
Quest has big cookies coming out and new chips. The cookies were pretty darn good, but I wouldn’t ever buy them because too much whey and fiber. 5 net carbs, but they were pretty sizeable. The chips were nacho cheese and Cool ranch, yeah like Doritos, and they tasted really, really good. Only 4 net carbs for a hand-sized bag. Doubt I would buy them unless I were bored at an airport, but pretty interesting.
One new area I found very interesting, is the whole vegan meat category. I find it interesting for what they’re trying to do, but I do think it’s gross and stupid. The best tasting one was Beyond Meat. They use pea protein, and they have a new sausage coming out. It was only 2 net carbs for a pretty big link, and to be honest, it tasted pretty damn similar to a freaking sausage. But it was still kinda gross thinking about what it truly was and how it’s made. I’d much rather eat a real freaking sausage. I only tried these fake meats out of curiosity.
Of course, it was fun getting as many free La Croix’s or Zevias or Whisps as I wanted, and seeing brands like Rao’s (of course all the samples were served with pasta). The rep working the booth was like, “Wait, you love Rao’s but don’t eat pasta? You want just the mushrooms and sausage in your sample?”
So many nut butters. I’m a sucker for nut butters. I only have it every once in awhile as a treat. I’d say about 3/4ths of the ones I saw had added sugar, but my favorite company was Georgia Grinders. No sugar, really creative mixes, like peanut pecan cinnamon, or just straight pecan butter. They were delicious!! Also saw a company doing Walnut butter. It was also good. No macadamia nut butter. I don’t know why. I bet it’d be awesome.
I finally got to try Milkadamia. It was delicious. My favorite was their unsweetened creamer. People may prefer it in coffee. I drank it like milk. Probably the best nut milk but it’s pricey!
Tried Smart Sweets, I think I saw them on Keto Connect video a ways back. Not bad for a commercial gummy! A little too hard/chewy.
Enlightened was there with 5 new flavors. Like Halo Top, these new flavors are higher on the carb count. Tried a few of them, too sweet for my liking. Also saw Three Twins ice cream is doing an organic knock-off of Halo Top. Pretty decent carb count (around 4-5) and they said it’ll be 4.99 per pint which isn’t too bad for organic. Arctic Zero was there with a whole new line and re-branding. They’re known for their pretty bad tasting product, so what did they do? They added like 9g or sugar to it with the new line. Idiots. Talenti was also serving some of their new Halo Top knock-off. Also had too much sugar so I didn’t bother tasting it.
As much as we think keto is growing (and it is) I was still surprised at how many products still have so much sugar in their products. You can find thousands of gluten free or organic this and that, but it’s still laden with sugar. It was evident to me that many people still aren’t getting it. And a lot of Vegan products. It’s weird because I don’t know any vegans in my circle of friends, yet you would think it’s pretty huge after going to this trade show. I dunno why, but it kinda frustrated me to see how big it is. Maybe it’s because I think healthy eating is the very opposite of veganism.
Anyways, maybe some of you may find this rambling about Expo West interesting! It was certainly fun to be there and see some fun keto products!