It is deceptively simple. It looks like a bar. It’s packaged like a bar. After eating one, you wonder why it didn’t already exist. After all, we have sweet snack bars, so why not savory? And why not a real food bar? It seems so obvious afterwards.
Today’s ‘nutrition bars’ are choc chip this, or peanut butter that, or blueberry something, that has been nowhere near a berry. Most are held together with honey or eggs i.e., animal products, and not the good kind or the kind kind (as in humane). Current keto bars come in the same sweet flavors, and are full of fake fibers and sugar alcohols.
If you’re a savory person, there is even less. The savory snack category is stuck at chip (potato, corn, name your veggie flour) plus salt/flavor (BBQ, cheddar, name your flavor) served in a bag. Almost all are carb based. The few keto alternatives e.g., Parmesan crisps or jerky are animal based or “keto-friendly” but not keto. That leaves nuts, which get boring fast, or nut butters that leave nasty wrappers in your pocket!
Previous “savory” bars were not really savory, but sweet bars in disguise e.g., sweet chili, sweet BBQ, using sugar to hold them together; and as they reduced the sugar they tasted like cardboard. Newer bars lean on chickpeas or beans, which make them dry and dull. Who actually likes beans?
Our insight was that real food tastes good. So KEHO is made of real food. KEHO tastes good because real food tastes good.
So why don’t we call it a food bar? Well it was never meant to be a bar. The inspiration was a meal, not a food bar. It all started with a different question – looking at the same thing through a different lens. We started with ‘snacky’ hand held meals like pizza slices, triangle gimpap and nachos – we even thought the packaging would be triangular and novel!
But novel packaging is expensive. Expensive is not accessible. We thought about how we keep food fresh at home. We wrap it in foil. So we wrapped KEHO in foil. It’s a special foil, but it’s only as complicated as it needs to be. Similarly we landed on using existing bar machinery to minimize cost of production.
Yeah, our ingredient list is long. Long doesn’t mean bad. Long means it is not the same four ingredients flavored with fake stuff.
We use real spices and herbs. Not fake flavorings or colorings, whether natural or artificial. We also don’t hide known carcinogens or anything else behind ‘and other natural flavors’.
We are the first to have cauliflower in a bar, I guess that does make us a food bar ;) We also have spinach, and red peppers, and shallots. Oh and lots of capers, see, because we like to have fun = ) #dadjokes
Ever seen lemongrass in a bar, or tomatillo, or even cardemom? They are way to fancy to be found in a mere food bar. There is food, and then there is food. That’s what we’re trying to say when we say we’re not a food bar, we’re a bite of real food.
Not only can you pronounce your ingredients, but you can actually see them too. So you can say what you see.
Our ingredients are whole. We use peas, not pea protein. We use almonds, not almond flour. That’s coz food processing removes good stuff as well as bad stuff at each step. We will write more on this in another post, as this is a complex topic, e.g., washing is processing, so is cooking, but there are many steps after to get to ‘refined’ carbohydrates. And unfortunately when it says ‘almond flour’ you don’t know what went in and what those steps were!
KEHO is ‘slabbed’ not ‘extruded’. Slabbed means all the ingredients are put on a conveyor belt and squished together hard until they hold. Most food bars are extruded. That means are formed from super ground up ingredients of varying quality (typically the lower quality stuff coz the good stuff went to other uses where you woud see the imperfections), that are made into a mush and then shaped and cut.
There is a world of difference between processed food and packaged food. Again food is not all the same, so we’re not just a food bar. We’re a bite of real food!
How did we choose our cuisines? Our different mini-meals come from the most popular plant-based dishes on Seamless. The spices were blended from an analysis and excel aggregation of the highest rated recipes online. Followed by refinement by chefs and fancy food critics. KEHO was carefully crafted at every step. Gourmet met geek.
They are constructed like a meal - the typical carb base of rice, pasta or tortilla is swapped for fiber, the protein is plant based, the veggies are dried and the 'special sauce' is yummy good fats with carefully curated custom spice blends. We are not copying any cuisine, we’re inspired by it – after all how many meals are keto today.
To give an example the tex mex moment has pepitas, the curry in a hurry has almonds and the pizza to go has pistachios, and the thai me over has peanuts – each a fit with their cusines. They also have macadamia and pecans, which are not found everywhere. The blend brings the BOOM!
KEHO has rich complex flavor taste. Sorry no PBJ here.
So, before you eat, do you send a memo to your body saying – hey food incoming, or food bar incoming … this is a meal, or this is a snack? Duh, your body doesn’t know the difference. A snack is not replacing anything, it doesn’t get the VIP treatment bypassing the metabolism and excusing it’s poor nutrition.
Bars today are designed as a snacks between meals. They give you a sugar shock to jolt you back into action, or bomb you with salt to wake sleepy taste buds. They give you a poor mix of macro nutrients, typically loaded with carbs. Today’s ‘nutrition’ bars average 2.5 tsp of sugar!
The sugar and refined carbs fly through you system, leaving you with a crash and craving the next hit. Boom and bust, not sustained energy.
Real food is digested slower, especially if it has whole ingredients and fiber (if eating plant foods). It’s worth noting that our fiber is the prebiotic soluble kind that feeds gut bugs. It is also naturally sourced from a cassava root.
Despite KEHO having more fiber than most food bars, we can’t call it high fiber or a good source of fiber – because to make that claim the FDA also requires the product to be low fat. GRRRR. The FDA is fattist!!!
It doesn’t really matter tho. The fiber passes through. What remains are the nutrients. KEHO has half the nutrition of a salad! Two make up a salad.
KEHO bites are arguably the most nutrient dense snack. Freeze dried veggies retain almost all the nutrients (in fact improving antioxidant retention as they stop the degradation). They weigh 10x less than fresh veggies as the water has been removed. Water is the heaviest zero nutrient being needlessly shipped around the world. Fresh food being air shipped is one of the highest contributors to ‘food miles’ impact, and KEHO eliminates these.
Our main preservative is our packaging. The foil keeps it fresh. We also don’t add clear windows because our ingredients are preciuos, like wine, beer or olive oil which is in pizza to go, that come in brown bottles for a reason.
Oh btw, unlike many brands, we don’t say that we don’t have any preservatives. Duh, salt is a preservative and found on almost all labels. Our salt level is less than 200mg per serving for the record. This means it in line with the FDA guidelines for low sodium snacks, so good for everyone, including hypertensives.
We also add rosemary extract that is an antioxidant, yes spices are our natural antioxidant.
The one ingredient that maybe less familiar is sunflower lechitin which is an emulsifier. That means it holds water and fat together, like when you make mayonnaise. Many people take it as a supplement, so now you don’t have to. You’re welcome. Ours is the fancy kind that comes from a cold press process, the same way that olive oil does.
A ton of products are low carb or keto friendly. The typical threshold is 4-5g of net carbs. And yup, you can fit that into your macros to get a hit of sweet, but you don’t get the rest of the nutrition with it. So those end up being wasted carbs – “carbage” - coz that craving for sweet will return and now you’re actually hungry too. Double trouble.
KEHO is designed to be within keto macros of low net carb, moderate protein and high good fats. We aim for <10% net carbs, ~15% plant-protein and >75% good fats.
We flipped the script. It may look like a food bar, but it’s not a food bar, it is a bite, a bite of real food.
The result is not packaged food, but food, packaged. Ok, so maybe it is a food bar ;)
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You’ve wanted to try keto. You’ve heard it’s hard. Maybe you’ve even tried it, and decided it’s hard. Yeah. It can be. Because the world is built for carbs. They are everywhere. Especially if you don’t eat or try to avoid meat. So where and how to make keto fit?
The three dimensions of time, space and energy. Ok, there maybe alternative universes or simulations that are happening in parallel (or anti parallel, or whatever direction you’re headed in), but well stick to our 3D world to make keto fit.
Time is precious. The quality kind is a love language for many. And we never have enough of it. Who wants to add meal prep on top. Not happening. Especially when the alternative is netflix and chill, and that comes with ice cream! Now to make keto fit in, of course you can swap your faves to keto alternatives, like keto ice creams, or keto cakes. But here you’ve still lost something, you traded down the carbs, and with it the taste, so that’s a waste of time. The best way to make keto fit in your schedule, is to prioritize your time. You have to make time.
Yes you’re busy. The wake up, the cacao ceremony, the meditation, the yoga flow, the gratitude journal, the 10 step skin routine, the smoothie, the meal prep, the gender neutral hair removal and the adding of lashes, the vitamins and the collagen. All making a difference but not making time. The only way to make time is to stop doing something. We always assume that time comes from watching TV or scrolling insta, and maybe it should. But should is a horrible word. Especially as those are social fun activities in our socially distant, less fun world. How about you give yourself permission to not do something, to make time for keto, at least to start with. Here is a good one, do you dare say no to a dinner or drinks and make yourself a home meal? Or listen to a podcast on keto?
Time is your life in the end. Time is not money like the old saying goes. We may trade some of our time to make money, but money is not time, so time can’t be money – ergo ;) And you know what they say, the best time is right now. So make time, to make keto fit into your life.
Space is constrained, and right now comprises of these same four walls. Anyone else rotating around their dining table for a different view? That’s if you have space for a dining table. Not here in New York. What about your pantry, or rather that one cupboard you have. You have to clear space, to make keto fit in. Actually do it. Do it now. Walk to that pantry, grab a trash bag on your way, and throw out all crap carbs. Yeah, that old microwave popcorn bag and artificial flavoring, yup. The jam with dodgy stuff on the rim. The old taco mix box. The rice and pasta and noodles. Nope you don’t need them and yes your health is worth more than those dollars. Don’t forget to open the packs and separate them for recycling! Clear. It. Out. Now you can make keto fit.
Energy can’t be created, no matter how hard you try.You can make time and space, but you can’t make energy. If keto feels like more work, it’s not gonna happen. So to make keto fit, it has to be the same or less work. Yet, it is hard to start something new, like learning new recipes and products, and where to find them in store or online. There is massive inertia to change. This is the hardest one. Here getting an external push helps – like doing it for someone or something, a family member or a wedding, or getting an accountability buddy, because things are easier together, or changing your environment – like moving Friday nights from dinners to dances, or having coffee walks instead of brunch.
There is a theme here. It’s sharing your goal. That means you need a goal and to say it out loud, and to someone. The goal can be a goal weight, but given you don’t know how you’ll respond, we like starting with goal times. It also means it seems less big and scary to committ to a time limit that is not forever. Change happens a moment a a time. To make keto fit, we suggest setting many small goals, starting with say lets see if you can fast a day, and then get into ketosis (and test that, that’s an awesome moment), then may aim for one or two weeks. Then maybe for three. If you fall off the wagon, you know you can do the steps again. Some suggest removing some foods at a time e.g., just remove sugar but keep more starchy carbs like sweet potatoes. We think that just lenghtens the pain and delays the benefits, but try it (we recommend with a glucose meter so you see how your body is reacting).
Writing a goal and progress down helps. Just try this. Put a note in your phone right now of when your last food was, count how long ago. Congratz, you’re already on your way. Even better is if you tell someone your goal. We’re often shy because we are scared of failure. That’s why realistic goals are so important. So how about making that first goal not snacking until your next meal, and sending a text to a buddy to say that. Sometimes it’s easier if that buddy is not nearby, so maybe join a facebook or insta group, or you can always comment on our feed!
The hardest part is getting going. Once in motion, it’s easier to stay in motion – once you’ve tasted keto it’s easier to stay keto. You’re already further along than few moments ago.
Duh, make it the right shape and the right size. Yup, a round peg for a round hole. Sized just snug ;)
The right shape to make keto fit in your life, is a square. Yup, a square. That’s a very specific shape you are thinking. Is it because many keto peeps are a tad nerdy, maybe a bit square? Some of us don’t even drink. But, nope that’s not what we mean. We mean a square meal! The way to make keto fit in your life is to focus on the meals. Square meals. Real food. Even for the snacks.
The right size to make keto fit in your life, is of course Goldilocks size. Not too big and not too small, but just right. We made KEHO 1.5 oz which is 42gs, because that’s about 200 calories of real food goodness. We’re not huge fans of counting calories, but they are a handy common macro metric. The average dude eats about 3,076 calories a day and the average woman about 2,370 (yeah that 2,000 recommended daily calorie diet on a nutrition label is not very helpful for anyone). That means one KEHO is less than 10% of the daily calories of a person.
Now we’re fans of fasting and OMAD (one meal a day) and other fasting protocols, and tend to prefer eating more earlier in the day and less later in the day, the prince to pauper principle. We’re not actually huge fans of snacking, yikes, yes, a snack brand just said they are not fans of snacking. We are trying to put ourselves out of business before we have began!
We’re just realists, life happens. We miss meals and want treats, and we are keeping those keto. So assuming classic societal three meals a day, split it even steven square to 30%/30%/30% that leaves 10% for KEHO ;) or eat two or even three for a meal.
KEHO is just the right size to make keto fit in your life ;) The answer is always 42 (grams of KEHO goodness!).
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