Ketogenic Dieting Rundown
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The ketogenic diet consists of consuming fats for 99% of your diet and carbohydrates as 1%. The point of this diet is to have your body reach ketosis. We’ve known that sugar-laden foods are detrimental for the body, and a keto diet is touted to be the panacea to our society’s ever-present diet dilemma. It's gaining a decent amount of attention because it completely reverses the low-fat diet pathology that has plagued our psyches for decades—memories of low-fat cookbooks appear in the forefront of many minds when told that to consume more fats means improving your health. Perhaps we as Americans have been misled, and feel a need to atone for lost time that could have been better spent eating more pork and less porridge.
Used as a way to mimic fasting for epileptic patients around the globe, the ketogenic diet has shown promising evidence to alleviate numerous afflictions: rosacea, eczema, acne, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and even Alzheimer's are reported to decrease in severity when this diet is followed. By reaching ketosis, our bodies are able to burn excess fat (through ketone bodies) instead of glycogen. Ketone bodies are produced, which increases the amount of gamma delta T-cells throughout the body, which in turn reduces inflammation through their tissue-protecting properties.
Following this diet entails limiting yourself to no more than 50 grams of carbohydrates everyday while maintaining your caloric intake. Foods that are encouraged are anything with a low-carbohydrate count. This diet should be done under the supervision of a physician; long-term adherents have been reported to experience nutritional deficiencies and other serious ailments.
Although this is a drastic diet, it has come with a silver lining: amazing recipes, such as this crispy verde chicken and this dessert. It also gives us an excuse (as if we needed one) to indulge in charcuterie boards. If you have followed this diet in the past, let us know how it went for you in the comments!
