Keto fats, sauces and oils – the good, the bad and the ugly

Many foods taste better with a little something — a buttery sauce, a spicy dip, a flavorful relish, a savory marinade. And a keto diet allows plenty of room for enough fat to enjoy every meal.

What fats, oils, sauces, and dips can you add to your food and stay keto?

What’s best for your health?

Condiment clash

In a keto contest between mustard and ketchup, who wins? Mustard, hands down. Ketchup is full of sugar; mustard often has little or (occasionally) none.

But again, read labels carefully as some mustard brands do sneak in sweeteners.

For example, traditional Dijon mustard has 2 carbs while some “honey” mustard brands may have 10 grams or more.

Barbecue basics

Feasting on tasty baby back ribs or a seared steak fresh off a hot grill is one of the great pleasures for many on the keto diet. However, beware of store-bought barbecue sauces, which are often high in sugar. Eat them with full knowledge of their carb hit, or try instead a savoy, sugar-free rub or just season with salt, pepper, and powdered or minced garlic.

See our low-carb & keto BBQ guide

Most of us start out understandably fat phobic after 40 years of being encouraged to eat low fat.

On keto, you don’t need to fear the fat. Eat the butter, leave the skin on your chicken, and eat the entire egg yolk and all. Drizzle on olive oil. Fat tastes great, it satisfies, and it helps make your keto diet sustainable.

How much to eat?

If you are hungry between meals, consider eating a bit more protein and fiber first, and then, if needed, consider adding more calories from fat. See our guide on how to eat more fat

A word about oils

What about vegetable, nut and seed oils? This is a bit more complicated. Natural oils that have been around for thousands of years are generally safe and should be embraced on a keto diet.

Feel free to use pure olive oil, ghee, avocado oil, almond oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, fish oil — anything for which it is easy to extract the oil with simple pressing, grinding, churning or low heat separating.

We do recommend minimizing the use of industrial seed or vegetable oils created within the past 60 years, such as corn oil, soy oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and cottonseed oil. These oils are created by chemical extraction and high heat industrial processes. Since it’s not clear what kind of effects this might have on health, we feel that sticking with traditional, less processed fats makes sense.
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