If you know Keto Chow, you know that we are adamant about being open and honest with you and ensuring that we have only the best ingredients. To that end, we’ve been working on improving the formula of our flavors. A few months ago we started an effort to change out the type of oil that lubricates the spray drying equipment used to make the flavors in Keto Chow so that all the flavors are made on equipment using MCT oil instead (rather than the industry standard of using canola or sunflower oil).
Due to food regulations, edible oil (as opposed to something like WD-40) has to be used on the off chance that any makes its way into the final product (you even see this in the giant crushers used by RealSalt® – the grease they use is totally human edible). In practice, there should be 0.00% in the flavoring and technically we don’t actually have to declare any of these oils on the ingredient list of Keto Chow, but that isn’t how we do things around here. We always try to be open and honest, the way we wish ALL companies acted. We get a lot of complaints about canola or sunflower oil being listed on the ingredients of a few of the flavors (even though the actual amount is likely zero) due to our desire to be completely open instead of hiding. It is far better to just eliminate those contentious ingredients from the manufacturing process.
Anyway…
So we’re working to replace the other oils in different flavors with MCT and we got a version to test of the Irish Cream flavoring. It tasted perfectly fine so I requested the nutritional analysis and specifications, just like always. Except for this time, the ingredient list of the Irish Cream came back with one glaring change:
“coffee powder”
I went back to the flavor people and asked if the formula had changed to include coffee powder. They informed me that the Irish Cream had always contained coffee powder but it was formerly listed as “natural flavoring” and was now being broken out separately as an ingredient. After further research, we discovered there is 0.1g of powdered coffee with 2.5mg of caffeine in each serving of Irish Cream Keto Chow. For comparison: the Chocolate Mint Keto Chow has 1.5g of cocoa powder with 3.45mg of caffeine, Chocolate and Chocolate Peanut Butter have 4g of cocoa powder with 9.2mg of caffeine. Mocha has 110mg of caffeine. That means the current stock of Irish Cream we have on our shelves does contain a (barely) measurable amount of coffee powder and caffeine. Since getting the news about Irish Cream, I then went back and asked for a more detailed report on the caffeine content in the Caramel Macchiato: turns out the current stock contains 0.93mg of caffeine per serving with 0.0375g of coffee powder.
For many people, finding out there is less than 1/10g of actual, for realsies, coffee in the Irish Cream or Caramel Macchiato is a non-issue “um, so what? I add brewed coffee to mine when I mix it!” But for others, it’s a full-stop “NOPE!” – Miriam and I choose not to consume coffee at ALL so we are in that second category. The unfortunate situation is that operating on the best information we had, the Irish Cream and Caramel Macchiato have printed on the packaging “Does not contain actual coffee or caffeine.”
So what does this mean for the future of the Irish Cream and Caramel Macchiato Keto Chow?
- First and foremost: if you purchased Irish Cream or Caramel Macchiato Keto Chow based on the premise that it did not contain any actual coffee or caffeine, and wish to exchange it for a different flavor, please contact our customer service team.
- We are going to continue finishing up the process of changing out the machinery oil used to make Irish Cream and Caramel Macchiato. Along with that effort we will also be testing a change in the flavor to remove the coffee powder without impacting the taste.
- Both changes in the flavor ingredients for Irish Cream and Caramel Macchiato should (ideally) arrive in the next batch we order. Currently that is expected to be version 2.7.2 but plans might change if any changes are made to the general recipe.
