Is there a consensus on saled pumpkin seeds?

(Alex) #1

It seems like every month I read an article online that says the opposite of what I read another time. Are pumpkin seeds (roasted + salted) keto friendly or not? What is the net carb value? It seems to vary significantly every other time! Can I eat the entire salted seed with its shell? I’m very confused and would love to snack on them when watching a movie, kind of a keto pop corn alternative.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #2

Well they are quite high carb, 54g per 100g but if your just having a few then guess it’s fine from that angle but then are a seed right? personally, I wouldn’t bother.
Better sprinkle some chopped bacon on a salad :slight_smile:

(Alex) #3

There is no consensus. Different sources site different values for net carbs. Some have it as low as 2.7 net carbs per 28g. It is a great source of healthy fats and minerals, and you get the salt. A salad is not like pop corn to snack on while watching a movie :blush:

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #4

I can see the attraction … and I ate the daily at one time. A mix of sunflower seeds pumpkin seeds, flax etc … but I was very sick so I guess I associate them with my old poor diet.
Some things you have to let go … sadly.

(KM) #5

I have a guess that the low ratings include the shells, which I think would have a huge amount of fiber - and general bulk - compared to shelled “pepitas”. That would dramatically reduce both the net carbs and the calories in a comparably sized portion. I honestly have no idea which numbers to use, I ran into the same question.

#6

I looked at the data in various places, it says 4g carbs per 100g, it makes sense to me. Oily seeds typically are very fatty and quite low-carb though it varies. I put no restriction on it on my original keto but it’s not like I snacked on it, I like pumpkin seeds as keto flour (when I am off carnivore-ish, of course) and never used more than 10g of it…
Flax is the super low-carb one, 0.5g net carbs per 100g I think. The total is high but I never cared about that, it you need a low total, that’s different, IDK what is the total for pumpkin seeds.

(KM) #7

Yes, that makes sense, that the shelled seeds would be similar to other nuts in calorie and carb content and the salted shells wouldn’t add too much of anything. The tricky part would be guessing the volume of the shelled seeds without actually shelling them first.

(KM) #8

@Shinita, a question: about how much volume is 100 grams, if you’re estimating it by eye and not talking about something fluffy? Obviously it would be very different depending on the substance, but if you were, say, cutting yourself a 100 gram slice of meat, or pouring out 100 grams of flax seed, would you say it’s a fist-ful? A deck of cards? A golf ball? A tennis ball? … Ok, :slight_smile: I answered my own question, an ounce is 28 g, so about the same size as a quarter cup measure, a small fistful.

(Joey) #9

If you’re planning to “snack” on seeds during a movie you’re already in trouble.

Movies are not the source of genuine hunger. This kind of eating association is a recipe for disaster.

#10

I don’t care about the volume, why should I…? I measure weight… Even nuts can have a drastically different volume for the same weight! I mean the same nut :slight_smile: Walnuts can go fluffy or dense when ground, I only have experience with that :slight_smile:

Those are things I never ever understood in articles. I never would say something like that. It makes no sense to me, it’s not helpful, it confuses me like crazy.
100g meat can have wonderfully different dimensions :slight_smile: It can be a thick slice or a thin one. Or a dodecahendron if one is very dedicated and much, much better with a knife than I am.

The even worse thing is half of a plate or something. I could put 3-4kg meat on half a plate, much probably. I wouldn’t even need my biggest plate for that. At least a standard golf ball has a fixed volume, I think. Fists come in various sizes… Our recipes thankfully don’t talk about oz or much worse, cups but they say “2 carrots” and it says about nothing to me… Carrots don’t have a normal sizes, there are small and big ones alike. The same with cucchini. Tell me GRAMS. Only grams. I can handle a normal sized egg (extra large in foreign countries for some reason) as I know it’s 52 grams (without the shell). And anyway, I use as much eggs as I can anyway, no matter what the recipe says (but it’s still nice to know the original one).

(Alex) #11

It’s not good to Assume, If you don’t know the saying, look it up :wink: j/k
Last night we had movie night, we usually have them once a weekend. I do strict OMAD, except on movie night where I extend my eating hours to 4 hours/24. I don’t want to let keto make me seem too anti social to our friends so I was thinking that I could snack on them while watching the movie while everyone else had their pop corn.

I had 100 grams during the movie, and I took the worse case scenario and it was like 10 grams of net carbs, one other site said 2.7, another 4…etc… Had steak with butter and eggs for dinner, no salad last night. The movie sucked!! :joy:

(Joey) #12

I’m well aware of the saying… and have been called this by the people who love me the most. :roll_eyes:

I rest my case. :wink:

#13

What has eating to with being social…? People are together, talking (at least my group totally talked during movies… we watched some really bad movies but it is funnier with a good company) or just sitting next to each other, watching the same things… What does it matter if one is eating? Well our movie club had the eating part too but never during the movie itself. And everyone brought whatever they felt right.
I never understood eating during a movie BUT at some point I sometimes liked eating some peanuts . It’s the first minute, then I don’t have anymore as it wouldn’t be pretty if I kept eating them…

Of course, it’s me, we are all different, I have nothing against eating without hunger or need anyway, it would be quite hypocritical from me :slight_smile: I eat for joy a lot, it’s another thing that if I do it right, I need those nutrients anyway.

(Robin) #14

So true!
Hard lesson. I simply dare not eat while doing anything else, like watching tv. A recipe for disaster… mindless eating.

(KM) #15

My friends would find it quite antisocial if I snacked on them. :rofl:

#16

Well I bring 10g peanuts with me upstairs… I won’t eat more than that without getting up from my comfy anime and movie watching beanbag, going downstairs and making some very conscious choices… It’s still risky, I easily may WANT to eat more peanuts (at least I had that in the past. I virtually never go over 10g a day and it’s 10g more than I should eat but still, not an epic failure at proper eating. I do that in other ways).
I eat the peanuts one by one. They should be savored! So it’s for not so interesting movies.

(My normal peanut portion is way less than 10g. I came a long way.)

(KM) #17

One decent hack I’ve found for seeds and especially nuts is to buy them in the shell. I won’t overeat pecans or other hard-shelled nuts if I have to crack and fiddle with each one, and it’s so satisfying when I actually get some food out of them!

(Alex) #18

That’s how I eat them. They are much more nutritious that way, the shell contains minerals according to the villagers here. They told us that they are very healthy, but they don’t quiet understand why I eat so little of them, they’ve never heard of Keto…

(KM) #19

Where is “here”?? Interesting! I do eat the pumpkin seed shells; I put the shells from hard nuts in my garden so maybe they’re contributing some minerals to the soil.

I avoid using the term keto because unless people are specifically researching and eating the diet, they don’t know what the word means. I’m going on a trip where I’ll meet a new person who will host us for a day, and when he heard I eat “keto” he got all flustered and contemptuous about my “fad diet”. Turns out we eat almost exactly the same thing, he’s just been doing it for the last 20 years without a label. I’ve also discovered that when I say I eat a very low carbohydrate diet, people nod approvingly but most of them wouldn’t know a carbohydrate from a carburetor. “I don’t eat grains, starches, sugar or processed food” works wonders for general comprehension.

(Alex) #20

I’ve been traveling and living in different parts of Italy, currently in Sardinia for the past 5 months. Since I work remotely, I’m fortunate to have the flexibility to live around the world. Sardinia, being one of the world’s blue zones, is fascinating – people here easily live to 100 years or more. What’s really interesting is that their diet, a mix of Mediterranean and low-carb, resembles keto, even though they don’t consciously follow it.

When I mentioned being ‘anti-social’ before, I meant that I always try to immerse myself in the local culture, traditions, and expectations of the friends I make. Social norms here are quite different, and it’s all about adapting and learning.