Mark from the Low-Carb Show, contacted me a few weeks ago to see if I would like to do an interview for his podcast and the recording has just been posted. His wife sent him down the rabbit hole of Ketogenic Meal Replacement drinks and he found Keto Chow, ordered some, and enjoyed it enough to get me on his podcast to talk about Keto Chow, the progress of Keto Chow 2.0, Domain Squatters, Mac&Cheese, and a bunch of other stuff! I reference a post about Arches National Park in the podcast, I’ll save you the hassle of finding it: “Vacationing for a week (mostly) on DIY soylent” (you can see more of my Dad’s stuff here) – this is from about a month before I started doing Keto and was still doing “People Chow” which was primarily corn masa.

I keep telling my teenagers I’m “Internet Famous” – they still just roll their eyes.

It’s about time for an update on Keto Chow 2.0, wouldn’t you agree? This week we finally tackled the funny aftertaste problem for realsies. The Whey Protein Isolate we started experimenting with significantly reduced the bad flavor (so it was essentially non-existent)… for a few hours. If you tasted the mix anywhere from 30 minutes to 3-4 hours after mixing it would taste fine. For many people, this would be sufficient, but I like to mix up 3-4 days worth at a time so I can just grab them out of the fridge. I’ve said it before: I’m not going to sell a product I wouldn’t use (and enjoy using!), I’m pretty much my worst customer =). The time delay aspect was particularly vexing and pointed to some sort of ingredient interaction causing the issue. I got samples of each ingredient, mixed them up in water, both alone and in certain combinations. Straight potassium citrate isn’t particularly nice tasting.

Anyhow, the Isolate all by itself did not have any weird flavor, nothing really did… until I tasted the Enzyme Blend + Whey Protein combination. I discovered the flavor anomaly! The enzyme blend alone was fine, the breakdown of the lactose in the whey by the enzymes was most decidedly the problem and it got worse over 2 days. On Thursday we had new samples made that omitted the enzyme blend. I’m super happy to report that all of the flavors now taste exactly the way they’re supposed to, and with the “200 mesh” xanthan gum you can mix it without a blender and get good results – everything is coming up Milhouse! At least in KC 2.0.0 there isn’t going to be an enzyme blend. For most this won’t be an issue, but if you’re lactose intolerant you will want to consider using Lactaid or another enzyme blend. There are 0.58g of lactose in each serving of Keto Chow 2.0 thanks to the Whey Protein Isolate being super low in carbs. Adding 1/2 cup of heavy cream brings the lactose up to 3.31g.

This coming week we’ll make some bigger sample batches so I can start doing more extensive short-to-medium term tests as we gear up for full-on production; which I now expect to be starting (maybe) March 6 or later, not sure which flavors we’ll be doing first. The plan is that they’ll be mixing up all of the ingredients except the color and flavor in their giant mixer to make a base powder, then they can do smaller batches for the individual flavors. Anyhow, I’m super excited about the prospects of getting this going!

On a final note, this week I added a “Recipes and Flavor Hacks” page, check it out.