Karbs (for CKDs) Guidelines:

This 'dummy' recipe is to compare the price of karbs (i.e., carbs used for carb-cycling on a ketogenic diet).

The parameters are set such that fat has zero value (since, when carb-cycling, it is often favourable to stay as low-fat as possible so as to minimise fat-storage and to maximise insulin sensitivity), and protein also has zero value (since the cheapest carb-sources, lentils, oats, beans, have so much protein that in order to hit ambitious carb-targets, protein goals get met without any additional action).

Advice

• Sprout grains & beans such as oat groats, rice, quinoa, chick peas

The reference macro-nutrient ingredients are (for a non-lentil diet):

• 🍠carbs: Tesco organic porridge oats (£2.14/kg oats, £3.87/kg complex carbs)
  • 0.1–0.4p/g carbs (rounded up from 0.387p)

The price of 150g of carbs + 150g protein is, at minimum, £1.60, making it £10.67/kg, or £1.07/g of a 🍖+🍠 mix.

Meal planning with this dummy recipe

One way to maximise variety in food shopping while simultaneously limiting cost is to buy according to the following formula:

• the best value food makes up 1/2 of one's calories for the macronutrient in question
• the amount of a food that is, for example, twice the price would be purchased in 1/4 of the amount (1/8 of the total calories for the macronutrient, in this case)

E.g. Oats are the cheapest complex carb source; therefore someone requiring 150g of carbs per day would buy 75g of oats per day (£0.16). Quinoa is ~2.5x the price; therefore the amount of it to purchase would be half of 2.5x less than oats, or 75÷(2.5*2)=15g, or 10% of the total carbs per day.

This formula creates a diverging ∞ series that, in the limit —> ∞, has a finite maximum value.

This is reassuring in terms of limiting cost while allowing for a very wide variety in the diet.

Cheapest quinoa flakes on Amazon

Ingredients

Quinoa

Contains beneficial saponins Rich in magnesium, manganese, iron, copper, and other trace minerals

Amaranth

Contains a good amount of Lysine