Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Proceed with caution. I have no earthy idea what type of math this author is using because she is waaayyyyy off. I was born, raised, and live in the South. I wanted a few of the traditional favorites adapted for a keto diet to have for a rare treat. Most of the time we will be eating fresh vegetables, leafy greens, and full fat grilled meats. I thought I would make the drop biscuits and sausage gravy as a special brunch for my husband and myself. We track calories and macros. I thought I would be fine with this given that she has the biscuits listed at 1.5 net carbs per serving (or per biscuit). Yet the recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups almond flour. I used Bob’s Red Mill blanched fine almond flour. One serving of the flour is 2 tablespoons. There are 8 servings in a cup so I used 12 servings of almond flour to make one batch of biscuits. That’s 60 carbs total in one batch. There are 12 grams total fiber in the batch so there are 48 net carbs in the entire batch of biscuits. My batch ended up making 9 medium sized (about the size of a frozen or canned biscuits) biscuits. That’s 5.3 net carbs per biscuit. I realize that the author states one batch yields 10 biscuits (not 9) however even dividing by 10 you end up with 4.8 net carbs per biscuit NOT the 1.5 the author claims. She has it listed as 142 calories per biscuit and I came up with 140 per but that was with 9 biscuits instead of the 10 so she was fairly accurate (I.e. not just crazy off) on the calorie count for this one. So 4.8 net carbs per biscuit if you split the batch out into 10 small biscuits. I am not sure about the sugar alcohols in this almond flour. The nutritional information on the bag states 1 gram total sugar. Since the nutritional information does not explicitly add specifically state this is a sugar alcohol I am going to have to assume it is not. The packaging for this product does not specify net carbs and only mentions it contains 5 total carbs per serving on the front of the packaging. If I am mistaken in my calculations then I am wrong and I apologize however I have been trying to find a way to come up with 1.5 net carbs per biscuit as per the cookbook recipe and I just cannot make the math work. I also made the sausage gravy. She states there are 6 half cup servings in the batch of gravy with 1.6 net carbs per serving and 199 calories. Although she seems to be ok here on her carb count her calorie count is so wildly off it isn’t even funny. In the recipe she states just to use “1 pound bulk breakfast sausage” since this is in a keto cookbook and no indication is given to use a lower calorie (lower fat) or different type of sausage (such as ground turkey or chicken sausage) I think it’s 100% safe to assume that any old pack of plain, regular, full fat of sausage typically used in making these types of breakfasts here in the South will suffice. I used Jimmy Dean regular ground sausage. The recipe also called for 1 cup heavy whipping cream. (Honestly this would have tasted better if she would have cut way back the cream by half and added more water... it was overkill.) I am not going to break this one down as I did for the biscuits but I ended up with 377 calories per half cup serving, not the 199 she states. I did come up with 1.7 net carbs and she states 1.5 net carbs. We use MyFitnessPal to track and one of the reasons we have stuck with this app is because of the ability to add recipes and get the breakdowns per serving. I entered the recipes (checking myself) twice. Since this keto cookbook is highly rated with overall great reviews on Amazon I put my trust in the author on being accurate with her nutrition count. I was genuinely excited to try these recipes and I trusted the author so I made these two recipes for a Saturday morning brunch for myself and my husband and then we put in all of the information to track everything. We were both shocked at the carb and calorie counts showing in our food diaries. My husband was almost at his limit on net carbs for the day. Quick calculations using the author’s carb counts showed this should not have been the case so we started trying to find the reason for this discrepancy. Since I usually practice intermittent fasting during the work work and normally fast during the day only eating one meal for dinner this shouldn’t affect me too much just not eating the rest of the day. However the fact remains that the author is not to be trusted on her nutrition counts at all. If you are trying to plan out your daily intake just one of these miscalculated recipes will blow your entire daily food allotment/plans. I have been tracking my calories for at least five years and now switching to keto I have to (of course) pay special attention to macros as well so I do understand though that often calorie count (and carb count as well) is going to vary slightly depending on what brand of ingredient is used, etc... but the counts here are so inaccurate it’s just absolutely inexcusable. The recipes themselves were just OK tasting enough for an occasional treat when we get to craving some traditional Southern favorites my husband and I grew up with. If you know the correct nutritional information and are really craving biscuits and some gravy and have it planned so you are overcompensating for the rest of the day you should be Ok as an every once in a while type of deal. However.... I wouldn’t recommend eating traditional Southern food (keto or not) special or treat foods as a regular part of a everyday diet. The recipes in the cookbook are more Southern comfort foods and treats so I am a tad bit upset at this being presented as a cookbook suitable for everyday, all day fare. Growing up in the ‘80s in the Deep South yes we ate biscuits but they were not an everyday thing. The emphasis was on a lot of fresh and plain and simple foods like sliced fresh tomatoes, peas, beans, squash, onion slices, corn, potatoes, etc.... (since many of those veggies we have to cut for keto I thought I would be nice to be able to hang on to a few of the treats). In the beginning of the book the author details some of her personal struggle with her weight. She never explicitly states it but I came away with the distinct impression that she is implying that you can eat these types of foods everyday and it will be healthy (because hey, it’s low carb!) whereas my understanding of keto is that it should be more of a whole food type of diet (lifestyle) with plenty of leafy greens and low carb (low glucose impact) veggies with full fat meats, and some, some dairy and plenty of healthy fats. The picture painted in this cookbook is that we Southerners sit around all day eating straight from a bucket of lard with a side of biscuits and stuffing chocolate in our mouths all day long. My experiences as a Southerner have included biscuits but also and overwhelmingly they included tons of visits to local farmers markets, growing tomatoes and peppers in the yard, and having family and neighbors sharing excess produce from their home gardens. The bottom line is you cannot make good decisions with bad information and if I had known the true, actual, real, accurate carb count of the biscuit recipe I would have saved it for an evening meal one day where we had not eaten much else or had pre planned it out that way because we were both craving biscuits. What this cookbook has taught me is to not rely on anyone else’s nutritional counts even if they give the appearance of being trustworthy. Do your own counts and do the measurement conversions for yourself, and the math (triple check it in the case of these biscuits as I did). The flat out WRONG information given for these recipes is downright dangerous. Anyone trusting this author’s nutritional information is going to either never make it into ketosis in the first place or is going to get kicked out of it fast. Because of her inaccurate information we are now done eating for the entire day and I did have a special meal planned for tonight, oh well...