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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

keto diet

Magic Spoon, the Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Keto-Friendly Cereal, Now Available in Mini Boxes

When I was growing up in the ’70s, there were fewer victories greater than my mom agreeing to buy the variety pack of mini cereal boxes. Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, some healthy option I ignored, all shrink wrapped together for glorious consumption while watching Saturday morning cartoons.

Being a modern, health-conscious parent, those sugar-packed treats of yesteryear are verboten in the Albrecht household. Which is why I’m excited that Magic Spoon announced today that it is now offering its low-carb, protein-packed kids-cereal-for-adults in mini-boxes.

Spoon devotees might remember that we went a little ga ga over Magic Spoon cereal last year. (We even did a whole podcast about it.) Instead of sugar, the company uses Allulose, a sweetener found in sources like figs and raisins, and as I wrote at the time:

I dug into a bowl of the Fruity cereal this morning and it tastes just like the sugary cereal of my youth, but has only 8g of carbohydrates 0g of sugar and 3 net carbs for keto counters (Froot Loops has 26g of carbs, 12 grams of sugar and 23 net carbs). It doesn’t really taste like any actual fruit, it tastes “pink” to my tastebuds (which is probably influenced by its shocking pink color), but Spoon Founder, Mike Wolf thinks it tastes exactly like Froot Loops. Regardless of any synesthesia, I ate a whole bowl and was ready to eat more.

The only catch to this enchanted cereal was the fact that it cost $40 for a four pack of 7 oz. boxes. And up until today, you had to buy it in a four pack.

Magic Spoon’s new mini boxes aren’t exactly cheap. A twelve-pack including a variety of fruity, frosted, cocoa and blueberry flavors will set you back $29. Each 1 oz. mini box of Magic Spoon contains 12g of protein, 3g of net carbs and 110 calories.

The company raised $5.5 million in September last year and said at the time it planned to use its new funds to expand its business. These mini-boxes actually seem like a pretty smart way to do that.

With its low-carb, high-protein formulation, the mini boxes could open up Magic Spoon into the snack category. Additionally, in the time of coronavirus and social distancing, having individual, single-serve boxes could make it easier for Magic Spoon to get into offices or cafeterias. Though, single-serving boxes also creates more packaging waste.

Magic Spoon’s mini-move also steps on rival The Cereal School, which offers its healthier cereal in single serve bags.

Regardless of the reasons, the arrival of Magic Spoon minis may just mean that have to clear my Saturday morning, fire up some classic cartoons and enjoy a few bowls of cereal.

KetoCoach is a Home Blood Test Kit for Keto Dieters

I was legitimately nervous about the needle. I realize this makes me a big baby, especially since it’s not even a real needle — it’s the teen-tiny pointy tip of a lancet cartridge. But like a four-year old, I asked KetoCoach Founder, Matt Payne, if his companies ketone blood test was gonna hurt.

This is the second time I’ve gone on the ketogenic diet for a story. I did at the start of the year to test out the Keyto, which measured acetone in your breath to see how deep into ketosis your body is. But while exhaling may be easier, Payne told me that KetoCoach’s blood test provided more accurate results.

So back into a diet heavy on avocados I went to see how the two tests stacked up.

The KetoCoach system has three parts: a lancet, the digital meter and test strips. For anyone who monitors their blood glucose, this should all seem familiar. Place the test strip into the meter, prick your finger (after washing it), place a drop of blood on the test strip and wait a few seconds for the results.

The test is looking for ketones in your blood that show up when you are in ketosis. According to the FAQ:

If you are monitoring your blood ketones, you will be measuring beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), the most common ketone the body produces. Since the blood cannot get altered as much as urine can, blood is considered a more accurate, and more consistent measurement of ketosis. However, be aware that blood levels may still fluctuate (although not as greatly as urine).

There are other keto blood testing kits out there, but Payne says the difference with KetoCoach is that its test strips are individually wrapped in foil, which results in a cleaner test.

Before we begin, I should reiterate that I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist, nor do I actively recommend the keto diet. Check with your physician before embarking on dietary changes.

Much to my (big baby) surprise, the actual needle prick was the easiest part of the test. The hardest part early on was getting enough blood out for a test. Payne said to get a matchstick head-sized drop of blood to have enough for the test — but I wasn’t supposed to “milk” or squeeze the lancing site, as I could introduce other substances from my skin and impact the readings. I actually went through about three or four test strips (and lord knows how many pin-pricks on different fingers) before I was able to figure out how best to get out enough blood (one trick, getting a thicker gauge needle).

Once add your blood to the test strip, the device gives you a numerical reading: Lo, .5 – 3.0 is nutritional ketosis, 3.0 – 8.0 is high ketosis. I wound up doing two separate trials as I ran out of test strips early on and it takes about three days to get into ketosis.

Without getting into too many numbers, the KetoCoach worked as promised. By day 3 of being on a keto plan, the test said I was in ketosis. I never got above a 1.0, which could be because while I was pretty strict about adhering to the keto diet, my carb counting may not have been accurate enough.

Since I still had the Keyto, I decided to use that simultaneously with the KetoCoach. Each test was done around the same time every day. While the two devices operate on different scales, they seemed to line up — with the exception of only two instances. In particular, for the last reading I took, Keyto said I was in high ketosis, but KetoCoach said I was just in nutritional ketosis. Again, it’s hard to verify, but I certainly felt keto-y, if that’s a thing, and like I should be in high keto.

Without a full-on scientific lab to verify results, it’s hard to say that KetoCoach is any more or less accurate than the Keyto, though the theory behind it (a cleaner test) seems solid. The KetoCoach is definitely more complicated to use at first, but pretty easy to run after you get used to it.

For those wanting to measure their progress on their keto diet, it may come down to cost. The KetoCoach costs $50 for the starter kit, with additional 50-packs of test strips costing $35. For comparison, the Keyto breathalizer costs $250, but you can keep using it over and over. There is a little more to carry with the KetoCoach, but it comes with a floppy case that’s easy enough to fit in a gym bag or duffel.

It’s hard to give a flat out recommendation for either device without further testing. But the KetoCoach did seem to do as promised, and after getting over my fear of needles, was easy to do on a daily basis.

Keyto Raises $2.5M, Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for Ketogenic Diet Device

Keyto, a startup that helps people adhere to a ketogenic diet, today announced that it has raised a $2.5 million seed round of funding and launched an Indiegogo campaign for its Keyto breath analyzer and accompanying app.

The ketogenic, or “keto” diet, is a low-carb, high-fat diet and all the rage right now. Here’s how Harvard Health Publishing describes how the diet works:

In essence, it is a diet that causes the body to release ketones into the bloodstream. Most cells prefer to use blood sugar, which comes from carbohydrates, as the body’s main source of energy. In the absence of circulating blood sugar from food, we start breaking down stored fat into molecules called ketone bodies (the process is called ketosis). Once you reach ketosis, most cells will use ketone bodies to generate energy until we start eating carbohydrates again.

One of the ketones the body produces when on this diet is acetone, which is released via your breath. The Keyto analyzer measures the amount of acetone you exhale and communicates that level to the Keyto app. The app then reports back on what your ketosis level is on a scale of one to ten (the higher the level, the more efficient your fat burning). Based on your current and goal weights, the Keyto app then provides food and meal recommendations for you, as well as a community of other Keyto users to share information with and a color coded guide of over 10,000 items to eat while on the diet.

Keto adherents can pick up a Keyto system for $99 on Indiegogo right now. After the crowdfunding campaign, Keyto will retail for $150. In an interview, Keyto Co-Founder Dr. Ray Wu told me that the Keyto device is already in the production process and will ship to backers in January of 2019.

I asked Wu why, if the company is already in production and has raised a seed round, is it turning to crowdfunding? “One of the biggest reasons is business intelligence,” said Dr. Wu, “We’re trying to gauge how many units we should be producing, and we want to get people excited about the product.”

We are not dieticians or scientists here at The Spoon, so we can’t recommend (or condemn) the keto diet, nor validate the effectiveness of the Keyto product. However, Keyto isn’t the only company looking to pick up on what you exhale. This past July, Lumen launched an Indiegogo campaign for their own eponymous device which claimed to measure the CO2 in your breath to see if you are burning carbs or body fat.

FWIW, that Lumen campaign went on to raise more than $1.8 million dollars. Will Keyto be able to ride the keto craze and muscle up more money than that?