Keto Food Guides

The two in Start Here, in that order. What Is Ketosis explains the mechanism the other seven guides assume you understand — what your body switches to and how long the switch takes. The Keto Flu Checklist is what you will actually want in week one, when the symptoms arrive and you need to know whether they are normal. The category guides are reference material for after that: you do not need them until you are standing in a shop wondering about a specific food.

By net carbs per realistic serving — total carbohydrate minus fibre, measured against the portion a person actually eats rather than a 100g laboratory figure. Sage means it fits a 20g day without thought. Slate means it fits if you measure and count it. Rust means it will take most of your day's budget or is sold as keto while behaving like sugar. The same three tiers and the same colours run through all nine guides, so a sage item on the vegetables page and a sage item on the dairy page mean the same thing. The sweeteners guide is the one exception: it ranks by glycemic index instead, because carb counts on sweetener labels are misleading by design.

No. These are references to check as questions come up, not required reading, and treating them as homework is a good way to never start. Read What Is Ketosis, keep the Flu Checklist to hand, and then open a category guide the first time a real decision needs it — the fruit aisle, a wine list, a jar of sugar-free jam. Most people end up using two or three of the nine regularly and skimming the rest once.

As new questions come up from readers, rather than on a schedule. The underlying numbers — net carbs per cup, per ounce, per glass — do not move, so the guides are not the kind of page that goes stale monthly. What does change is the products on the shelf and the marketing on them, which is why the sweeteners and snacks pages get revisited most often. If you find something that reads wrong or a food that is missing, that is usually what prompts the next revision.