Keto or low carb cooking and baking does require some background knowledge on ingredients used, unless you're brave enough to blindly follow other's people recipes and never ask yourself "What if I replace, add, take out this or that ingredient ... ?"
When I started putting keto recipes together, I would keep browsing the Internet for nutritional information on nuts and seeds, so often used in low carb food. I used that information to decide on which type of nuts to use for a certain dessert. But browsing for nutritional stuff and comparing different types of nuts drove me nuts, so I decided to draw my own comparative table, and have it at hand at all times.
You might be asking yourself, why I don't simply take the nuts that contain the lowest amount of carbs and stick to those. Well, it's not that simple. Of course, different nuts have different flavours and come out differently in combination with other ingredients. Furthermore, some nuts are easily accessible, and some are not. Besides, no matter how high in carbs pistachios are, for example, I still love their taste, but I make sure I don't consume too much.
Therefore, when baking or cooking, the final choice of nuts doesn't only depend on net carbs. The table below does list different types of nuts, ranging from least to most net carbs, but that doesn't mean I use pecans too often. One reason being, they are not as accessible in Europe (yet) as in North America. Besides, things get even more complicated if you dig into science research that has lately given us some heads up on Polyunsaturated fats (PUFA's) which are very unstable and apparently bad for us. Here's some nice presentation and a good and easy read for you on this issue.
That is why the table below also shows the amount of PUFA's in grams per 100 grams of nuts, in the last column. Taking this information into account, no wonder why coconut can be so widely used, and macadamia so keto-popular. I'll go for macadamia more often in my recipes, but I won't get rid of pistachio, almonds, and such, for we all need the little enjoyments in our lives, don't we? After all, that's why My Sweet Keto exists.
I've also prepared macronutrient info on a few different types of seed you can use in keto kitchen.
The table shows the amounts of each macronutrient in grams per 100 grams of nuts.
| Nuts | Energy | Fat | Carb | Fiber | Net Carb | Protein | PUFA's |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pecans | 691 kcal | 68.6 | 13.9 | 9.6 | 4.3 | 9.2 | 21.6 |
| Macadamias | 718 kcal | 72.4 | 13.8 | 8.6 | 5.2 | 7.9 | 1.5 |
| Walnuts (English) | 654 kcal | 62.2 | 13.7 | 6.7 | 7.0 | 15.2 | 47.2 |
| Hazelnuts | 628 kcal | 58.0 | 16.7 | 9.7 | 7.0 | 15.0 | 7.9 |
| Coconut (dried, shredded) | 660 kcal | 60.7 | 23.7 | 16.3 | 7.4 | 6.9 | 0.7 |
| Peanuts (not actually nuts) | 567 kcal | 46.2 | 16.1 | 8.5 | 7.6 | 25.8 | 15.6 |
| Almonds | 590 kcal | 49.7 | 18.7 | 9.9 | 8.8 | 21.4 | 12.3 |
| Pine Nuts (actually seeds) | 673 kcal | 57.7 | 13.1 | 3.7 | 9.4 | 13.7 | 34.1 |
| Pistachios | 562 kcal | 43.1 | 27.5 | 10.3 | 17.2 | 20.3 | 13.7 |
| Cashews (actually seeds) | 553 kcal | 39.4 | 30.2 | 3.3 | 26.9 | 18.2 | 7.8 |
Joanne says
Pili nuts are another good option to eat on Keto. I buy them from Thrive Market online.
Tisa says
Thanks! We still need to try pili nuts!
Cynthia Brown says
Hi thank you so much for this great article on nuts for keto. Is there any chance you could present the table at the end in a different format, as the way it displays makes it very hard to read. 🙂
Tisa says
I see it got messed up with the lastest platform update. Thank you for the notice!