So to start I wanna be clear I know Soda is not conducive to easily maintaining Keto. I am currently not actively on my Keto diet but I am eating high fiber and very low net carbs[3-12 net carbs] as it’s best for my diabetes and enjoying a cup or two of soda a day and am noticing ketosis symptoms.
I am wondering if anyone here knows if soda and keto is actually compatible if the only carb intake is the soda or not?
Real soda with sugar or high fructose corn syrup? Or with fake sugars?
If it’s real sugar, I guess it’s possible, depending on how much soda and how active you are.
Am effectively bedridden, can’t be on my feet very long. And 8oz to 16oz, 20 tops. Currently drinking Dr.Pepper or Barqs so most likely high fructose corn syrup.
I have bad reactions to aspartame so I don’t drink diet soda and have been searching for a soda made with allulose, cant stand stevia or erythritol aftertastes.
@Clarus_Nox Greetings and welcome to the forum!
If by “soda” you mean carbonated drinks? …then rest assured that adding bubbles to a beverage will not interfere with maintaining ketosis. But there’s a world of difference between carbohydrate and carbonation.
No, there is absolutely nothing “keto” about sugary drinks. Nothing.
I rarely go “absolute” on anything. So I’ll say it again: Absolutely nothing keto about sugary drinks.
Can you get away with drinking sugary drinks? Sure. You can get away with lots of stuff. Smoking, dangerous extreme sports, unprotected sex with strangers…
But getting away is besides the point as you are asking about whether “soda is keto” on a keto forum. And by soda you further clarify that you mean Dr Pepper or Barqs with fructose corn syrup.
You’ve shared that you are diabetic (assuming T2D?). If you want to stop your diabetes from progressing and begin to reverse the damage, you will need to change the way you are consuming food and drink. Drinking drinks with fructose must end if you are serious.
Sorry to be a downer. Just offering an honest answer to your question.
Best wishes!
@SomeGuy Thanks for your reply, but I am already aware that sodas are not ketogenic, that was not my question I elaborated on in my post. My question was if the source of the carbs matter as long as they remain under my daily limit.
I am not aiming for ketosis right now, but am experiencing the symptoms of entering it even though I am enjoying a single soda or two daily right now with my very low carb meals. I am type 1 diabetes, no amount of dieting will make it go away.
The sudden experience of my ketosis symptoms got me curious if the source or type of carbs mattered as long as it fell within my daily limit. For the record when I am focused on Keto, I aim for under 25 carbs with 50 being if I feel like splurging. Currently with what I eat and drink including the soda I am taking in roughly 60 net carbs a day.
@Clarus_Nox Sorry I misunderstood. I took your question and heading (“Soda on Keto?”) to mean you were asking whether one can drink sugary drinks while trying to get the benefits of a ketogenic diet.
I’ll say again that I believe you cannot.
As a T1D, you know firsthand how critical it is to manage and tame your insulin/glucose cycle. This is an ongoing real-time issue … not something that’s okay if only the spikes get smoothed out “on average” over the course of any given 24 hour period.
The daily carb restriction is shorthand for most folks to convey that - within a 2 or 3 meal-a-day eating window - they keep their net carbs < 30 grams. It’s generally workable for those without the challenges of T1D who are getting started down a keto WOE.
The glycemic index of foods matters too. Especially to a diabetic. Fructose is pure “meth” to an insulin-resistant (or insulin-absent) body. You are spiking your glucose in the least healthy way.
And that’s not even getting into the distinction between gross carbs and net carbs - which is especially important for a diabetic to address.
In short, I will submit for your consideration that, by drinking sugary drinks, you are exacerbating your body’s existing metabolic challenges and promoting an addiction to carbs that you would be well served to break.
Again, sorry for any misunderstanding on my part. I wish you success in improving your health for many years to come. 
There is a school of thought called “If it fits your macros,” which would say that any carbohydrate under your 20 g/day limit should be fine. However, one 12-ounce glass of Barq’s Root beer contains 45 grams of sugar, which is over twice the daily carb limit we recommend. So if you are having one serving, and especially if you are having more than one a day, then you are consuming far more carbohydrate than we recommend.
Furthermore, each molecule of table sugar, sucrose, consists of a molecule of glucose bonded to a molecule of fructose. The enzyme sucrase cleaves that bond, leaving in the glucose to be handled in the usual manner (i.e., it will raise your blood sugar and hence your insulin, which is not what we want on a ketogenic diet).
But the fructose can be dealt with only in your liver, which can only handle so much at a time. The same metabolic pathway handles ethanol, fructose, and branced-chain amino acids, and if that pathway is overwhelmed, it promotes fatty liver disease, by means of a process called de novo lipogenesis. When we drink soda or fruit juice, there is no fibre to slow the absorption of the fructose into the liver, so the whole amount hits pretty much simultaneously. This is not good for the liver, as you can probably imagine.
As far as high-fructose corn syrup is concerned, the percentage of fructose is slightly higher than it is in sucrose, but the effect is essentially the same.
So the upshot is that while carbohydrates are to be avoided on a ketogenic diet, sugars are especially to be avoided.
But eating a low-carb, high-fat diet can help keep your blood sugar within a range that is not so damaging. It will also allow you to greatly reduce or eliminate your bolus insulin and will make your daily dose much more manageable.
You might wish to view this lecture by David Dikeman, an educator with the Type I Grit Facebook group. Mr. Dikeman has been working with Dr. Bernstein for several years now. In this lecture, he describes his experience with a ketogenic diet since diagnosis around the age of 8 or 9.
How much is “a cup or two”? 8 ounces (1 measuring cup) of Dr. Pepper contains 27 grams of carbohydrate. So the carbs could add up quickly.
Several people here enjoy small amounts of dark chocolate (e.g., the 85% kind), which contains some sugar. Bacon also contains sugar. So I guess the consensus is that a small amount of sugar won’t hurt, as long as total carbs are low. However, I wouldn’t consider even one cup of regular soda pop to be a small amount of sugar, as far as keto goes.
I wonder if you can water down your soda (with either soda water or plain water). Or learn to like the unsweetened flavored soda waters. They come in various flavors, although I like good old lemon lime the best. Good luck.
@PaulL So if I understanding your post, source type does matter.
40 carbs of juice/soda is way worse than 40 carbs vegetables and cheese, correct?
Still weird I am unintentionally entering ketosis despite the soda. And thanks for the concerns, but am going on 30 this year and been going on and off keto for the last 3 years. My biggest challenge is affordability of the diet rather than avoiding certain foods. I’m just splurging before diving into it again for as long as I can this year.
@islandlight yea, 8oz. unfortunately I can’t stand Zevia soda or LaCroy and normal diet soda causes stomach problems for me due to the aspartame, still searching for something I can enjoy.
Not necessarily “way worse,” but certainly differently worse. The goal of eating as little glucose as possible is to keep insulin down, in order to avoid its many damaging effects on the body. The goal of eating as little sugar as possible is to keep the fructose from causing fatty liver disease, steatohepatitis, cirrhosis, and (eventually) death from liver failure.
Well, then, Seltzer water and club soda are far cheaper per litre than sodas. For that reason alone, I stopped drinking sodas long before going keto.
I am trying to find a carbonated brand that uses allulose. I can’t stand erythritol or stevia. But so far breads, milk and ice cream made with allulose taste great and don’t break my ketosis. Finding things labeled for keto/atkins that don’t have dextrose, maltitol or the other sugar substitute traps is hard.
@Clarus_Nox I truly empathize with your medical situation. As a T1D you were dealt a crummy metabolic hand to play. It’s entirely up to you how you manage the challenge going forward.
Perusing a keto forum strongly suggests you are looking for useful info, perhaps shared experiences, and even some courageous support. You can find lots of that around here from around the world.
With all due respect, I don’t think affordability is your biggest challenge. And if it were, Dr Pepper would not be your best way forward. Sorry again to be a beacon of sour news.
FWIW, not buying manufactured food and beverages can save you plenty of money.
Agreed. You will be a T1D for life. The question you’re facing is how that life will unfold. Please take good care of yourself.
Actually, as I think about this point, it seems to me that the real challenge is avoiding going blind from diabetic retinopathy, or losing parts of limbs, and so forth. In this context, avoiding a bit of expense in the short term may actually cost more over the long term.
Perusing a keto forum strongly suggests you are looking for useful info, perhaps shared experiences, and even some courageous support.
Not really, been dealing with it on my own for the better part of half my life. I came here almost entirely to ask the 1st forum I found about a whim question as a result of noticing my ketosis symptoms forming despite having a glass of soda.
Might stick around to fish for other people’s experiences in finding alternatives to my preferred foods and drinks. My current check list is ketogenic pizza crusts, pizza sauce and soda.
And not to sound rude, but you really don’t know my financial situation and don’t wish to delve into it too much but I get by month to month on less than $800 a month for rent, utilities and food. An occasional splurging of soda for $1-2 is not gonna make a huge effect on my expenses with expensive ingredients that keto regards like all the flour.
You’re not sounding rude at all. You’re entirely right: I have no idea about your financial situation - nor much of anything else you’re facing each day.
I was simply responding to the question you posted, and then tried to shape some useful feedback and encouragement when you provided a few additional details.
Regardless of whatever else is going on in your life, being a Type 1 diabetic brings special challenges - almost all of which come down to what you ingest.
The more you can master your food and drink to your benefit, the more you will become the master of your future health. Again, best wishes
Almond flour, avocados, and things like that are totally optional. Generally speaking, the basis of a keto diet is animal foods such as meat, fish, and eggs. Vegetables are also optional (some might argue that point).
I’m in Canada, where the dollar is different and prices are different, so it’s hard to make exact comparisons. But my pension is about 2/3 of what a minimum wage person makes. I eat mostly ground beef and eggs, and other meat when it’s on sale (no vegetables or nuts because of digestive problems), and don’t find keto to be expensive. If I were truly poor, then yes it would be (compared to living on rice, etc.).
Sorry if I went on a tangent; I just wanted to say you don’t need to buy expensive flours and the like.
You’re fine. The most expensive part is the experimentation to find the options I like most. I wanna try macadamia flour but you can imagine how god awful expensive that would be. Buying new products to give them a try.
I found black soy beans would be a great replacement for pinto beans, being 17.5 net carbs per 15 oz can… but they are SUPER expensive here compared to the more common beans. Right now I’m going to try some and see if I even like them or not before I consider attempting to work them into a budget.
Best thing I ever did for my self was give up soda pop. I was a total Pepsi addict, always had one in my hand heading to my mouth.
If you aren’t willing to give up soda at least try to get Coke made with cane sugar instead of HFCS. It can be found in places that carry Kosher foods. Any grocery that has a large Hispanic customer base will usually carry Coke from Mexico. It tastes more like the original Coke. My local grocery, part of the Kroger group, always has some in stock. And a few other Mexican sodas as well.
I hope you find what will work for you. Do yourself a big favor and cut out or at least cut WAY back on soda. Sugar isn’t the worst thing in colas. That would be the phosphoric acid. It can clean your cars dirty battery posts in seconds. I know, I had to do that once, I thought it was BS, but yeah, cola cleans them very fast. Shortly after that experience, I stopped drinking soda.