Nuts and peanut butter/alternate butter suggestions?

#1

Please share your advice & experience with nuts and peanut butter (l know ingredients are important here.) I guess nuts are allowed but the carbs add up even with a small amount.
Any comments appreciated.

(Eric) #2

I don’t have peanut butter but I definitely have nuts every day. Mostly Macadamia nuts. It all depends on whether nuts are a trigger food for you. I weigh and track everything so I never go crazy with them. I know that for some people it can lead to a binge and the carbs can add up fast. If you are able to do nuts/nut butter in moderation they should be fine. Peanuts however are probably not the best option but you can still have them. Macadamia, Pecan and Walnuts all have a better carb/fat/protein ratios so I tend to stick to them but nuts in general are keto friendly.

(Rebecca ) #3

The only nuts I eat are macadamia nuts. 1/4 C is 1 g carbohydrate, so I’m ok with those once in a while. We also have almond butter on hand, but I don’t eat it very often.

#4

Nuts aren’t very carby… Even I never ate more than 150g a day (I had a long time when I ate that amount every day, surely on low-carb as I needed most of my carb allowance for vegs on keto but I still spent a lot on nuts. since I started to eat meat, I barely spend any but what could I eat on vegetarian keto? I needed my oily seeds then) but well, 150g nuts is A LOT :smiley: I always read it’s way too much just didn’t care as there weren’t good arguments, just assumptions and my body was fine and I hadn’t many options anyway.

I think the only nut I eat is walnut. Peanut is a legume but not so carby but I have/had an addiction so try to abstain (very easy on carnivore-ish, thankfully. and I learned to limit it to 5g at a time anyway but that took ages and I still can get overboard and eat, like, 30g… it was LOADS more in the past, that wasn’t nice, it doesn’t even satiate me). And I love poppy seeds but that’s the oily seed territory, still similar to nuts… :wink:
20-30g walnut is PLENTY, I put it into 2 pancakes.

Okay, it’s easy for me as I do carnivore-ish so I usually stay way below 20g with the carnivore part of my food (the vast majority of it)… But nuts aren’t nearly as dangerous as vegs (at least to me), they are rich and fatty and flavorful and a little goes a long way.

(Omar) #5

My issue with nuts very much like people who consume narcotic drugs.

Every nuts snack will be overdose compared to the previous one.

So I try not to touch it.

(Edith) #6

Are you looking for alternatives to milk based butter, or just questioning about nut butters? If you are looking for an alternative to butter in general, you can try using bacon fat, coconut oil, there is actually coconut butter which is similar to peanut butter in consistency but made with coconut instead, or even duck fat. I am allergic to dairy so I will use duck fat as a replacement for butter in savory recipes. All of these alternatives are no or almost no carb.

(Robin) #7

We are from the same cloth.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #8

Lard, tallow, and coconut oil are also great cooking fats, if you have to avoid butter/ghee.

As for nut butters, I would never try to use any of them as a cooking fat, given how strongly flavoured they are, but I do enjoy them occasionally for snacking. There is a health food store near me that has a machine for grinding nuts. When you grind your own, you can be sure there are no sugars or additives in the result. The same cannot be said of commercial nut butters, unfortunately. I had a tiny taste of my niece’s Nutella (a hazelnut butter) the other day, just to see what she was raving about, and boy! it was so sweet, I nearly gagged.

When I first went keto, I’d have roasted almonds as a snack (avoiding the flavours that had sugar in them, of course), and at first I’d eat a whole large package in one go. But I eventually stopped wanting so much, and now I hardly ever have them. The last time I had any almonds on hand, it took several days to finish the package. I find I definitely snack less if I eat enough at mealtime.

#9

I wouldn’t call that nut butter :smiley: It’s more than half sugar I think… I liked Nutella in my younger days but I ate table sugar with a tablespoon sometimes so it’s not comparable with my current tastes - or a normal ketoer’s tastes, I would think.
But even for a normal people, it’s to put on something, it’s way too sweet alone (yeah, of course people can eat it that way but it’s really hardcore, those people can eat pure sugar too).

I tried peanut butter once, way after I went keto first, I didn’t like it. It’s odd as I was totally addicted to peanut…

For some reason, I only snacked on peanuts (salted and well roasted)… I just don’t do that with almonds or walnuts. Maybe with cashew but that’s too sweet, not my style except 1-2 pieces a few times a year…

Nut was always a proper part of a dish. Walnut pancakes (I can eat them almost any time. it’s my emergency food when I am hungry and can’t stomach my proper carnivore food or I don’t have enough meat at the moment. the pancake itself is great and carnivore, the filling is where I go off. off carni, not off keto), nutty wafers… And whatever I lived on in my vegetarian low-carb/keto days, it was so long ago.

Snacky nuts can be dangerous. Many people says they aren’t satiating enough - while they are very easy to eat, they bring so much fat and calories and sometimes other problems.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #10

I didn’t know that, but it’s not surprising. No wonder a little bit nearly choked me!

#11

I just eat peanut butter, almond as a second, but nothing else is peanut butter. Unlike many, I’m not insane with ingredients but don’t like it to be garbage either. The carbs aren’t going to add up (that) fast unless you’re eating spoons of it for the sake of doing it, if you’re just doing normal things with it, it should be fine.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

You’re dead right, of course, but an article in the magazine Consumer Reports once claimed that there were data to show that 90-something percent of all peanut butter consumed in the U.S. was eaten by spoon from the jar. Just sayin’!

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

(Bob M) #13

I personally rarely eat nuts…as I’ll eat the whole jar/bag. Nuts are on my “don’t eat” list, along with bacon.

#14

The advantage to tracking macros, at least initially, is that you gain a clearer idea of what quantities of various foods are “okay” carb-wise. You can eat almost anything and stay under 20 or 30 carbs a day, but quantity is key. And since I’d rather not use up my daily carb allowance on a single food (because zero carbs elsewhere is difficult to achieve, and even tiny amounts add up), I try to limit my higer-carb nut intake to a few nuts or a teaspoon-ish of nut butter.

Mind you, not easy when it comes to a stir-fry with a bit of peanut butter stirred in last minute with hot chili oil, AND a few peanuts sprinkled on top with the spring onions. Oh lord!

#15

Do carbs in nuts really kick you out of ketosis? There’s so much roughage fiber in them, especially pecans.

I often crave peanut butter specifically I think because of the protein content and tryptophan. It also seems well balanced. It has the double fat to protein ratio which seems to be perfect. Lately after I eat it I feel sick though, so I’ve been staying away from it. I especially get a sick feeling from store bough peanut butter compared to the grind your own, even though it is organic with nothing added. I’m not sure why this is except that perhaps the store bought is more heated and processed in machines somehow?

I think what you replace it with depends on what you are getting from the nut butter. Are you looking for an alternative just for snacking/fats or are you looking for a protein source? If it’s just for snacking and fats, maybe try a few olives instead of the nuts.

#16

According to my data, I could eat 200g peanuts and still be okay carb wise… It’s impossible for me to spend 0g carbs on my daily food but 5g is pretty easy so if I just wanted to stay below 20g, I could spend 15g even on a tiny dessert if I wanted… Let alone a lot of nuts.
Things aren’t that simple though. My body would hate me and life after 200g peanuts :smiley:

(Joey) #17

Like many others have noted, portion control is difficult for many folks when it comes to nuts and nut butters.

When I do eat nuts (not regularly, but occasionally for a dinner dessert) I’ll grab a handful of pistachios from the jar and limit myself to that fistful - rather than put the jar in front of me which makes it hard to stop.

Almond butter (pure, no additives) in a jar sits in the fridge for many months without interruption.

As with all things, aim for moderation. To keep your carbs in line, moderation with nuts is especially important. While loaded with protein, some carbs come along for the ride and they can add up.

#18

Thanks. This all sounds good. I am good with moderation but best to avoid the nuts and peanut butter right now especially since it is Day 19 for me.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #19

Whether we are in ketosis or not depends on our level of insulin. So if you eat enough glucose (i.e., carbohydrate) to raise your insulin above the threshold, then yes, it will kick you out of ketosis. Fibre can slow the rate of absorption of glucose into the blood stream, but it does not reduce the total load. The level of carbohydrate in our diet is key.

If you need protein, especially tryptophan, you might do better to get it from meat.

#20

I don’t want to interfere with this thread, but it doesn’t seem worth making a new one for. I’m eating a lot of pacific chub mackerel but when I look at the amino acid profile it says tryptophan and cystine are low. Im having trouble sleeping and keep wanting a big spoonful of peanut butter because this used to lull me asleep before. Anything I can replace it with to get to sleep? I’m eating a whole avocado and dark leafy greens so I think magnesium and potassium are good.