Review: Not an accurate explanation of the Ketogenic diet.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 15, 2014
The Ketogenic diet has been around for a LONG time and has been very successful in managing a lot of health problems such as epilepsy long before anti-epileptic medicines came into being. It is still very successful in managing epilepsy on patients who do NOT do well with medicine.And it is an excellent plan to lower the unnecessary carbs to help lose weight. It is extremely close to a basic true Paleo diet plan.But while there's some helpful recipes int his book, there's also some gross misinformation in it.  For example, the guideline of 0-50 carbs for EVERYONE is completely false.That does NOT guarantee ketosis!  The Ketogenic diet guideline is 20% of calories from Protein (moderate protein), 75% of calories from fat (high fat) and only 2-4% of calories from CHO (very low carb), period.So it has to be calculated for EACH situation/patient. As this author defines ketosis, in order to produce ketosis on 50 CHO grams per day, you would have to be active enough each day to justify taking in 4000 calories a day.  That is not very many of us overweight people by a long shot! Ketones are produced by starving the liver of carbohydrates. And 50 grams per day will not do it.The maximum CHO intake for a 2000 calorie person on a ketogenic diet is 40 calories (10 CHO g) @ 2% of calories, 80 calories (20 CHO g) @ 4% of calories and 100 calories (25 CHO g) @ a maximum of 5% per day. So in order to be able to do 50 grams per day and produce ketosis, you  would have to be able to burn 200 calories of CHO (50 g) which is a low carb diet but not low enough to produce ketosis which is NOT the same thing for most people especially older people with slower metabolisms. By definition, low carb and ketosis/ketogenic diet are NOT synonymous.  They are only cousins.Even the new Dr.Atkins plan which is around 60 CHO no longer even mentions ketosis because it isn't ketogenic any more.The Frittata recipe has too many carbs in it @18 per single serving of the 8 for the recipe.  If you cut the brussel sprouts in half, you cut the carbs by 50% since they are the highest carb item in the recipe. If you substitute green onions for regular, you cut the carbs by 30%, all of which helps to get it down but still have the flavor. I personally do this all the time because it lowers the net carbs on any recipe, calorie for calorie.You can also decrease the serving size and that will cut the carbs as well to get closer to ketosis. But it is a good recipe. Most of her recipes are good and original with lots of pictures that help to show you how to change to this style of higher fat cooking .The Tequila Margarita with Splenda still has carbs in it because alcohol  has carbs. It's not just the simple sugar and lime juice.Some of her references for people to use to calculate their own keto levels are not what she references in her explanations such as 0-50 carbs per day. I did mine and they said I should do 25 CHO per day or 5% of my calories which is EXACTLY what I said she missed before I got to the back of her book.  And there's no way at my age that I should be on 1995 calories per day, period.  But at least the calculator does follow the 2,4, maximum 5% of calories for carbs on the ketogenic diet plan.I've been doing diets for some 35 years. I know the drill and don't have to copy it or try to learn it off the Internet somewhere.