The ketogenic (keto) diet has surged in popularity recently, touted for its potential health benefits. It's a very low carb, high fat diet often followed to promote weight loss and manage type 2 diabetes. Within the keto world, two distinct approaches have emerged: clean keto and dirty keto. This article delves into the differences between these two variations, helping you understand which might be a better fit for your health goals.
Understanding the Basics of the Keto Diet
The term "keto" is short for ketosis, a metabolic state where your body uses ketones for energy instead of blood sugar (glucose). This occurs when your carbohydrate stores are low, prompting your body to burn fat for fuel. Ketones are produced by the liver when it breaks down fats, whether from dietary sources or stored body fat.
A keto diet typically involves increasing fat intake while keeping protein intake moderate and carbohydrate intake very low. While the specific fat-to-carb ratio is important, the defining characteristic of a keto diet is its restriction of carbs. Generally speaking, a keto dieter will typically increase their fat intake, while keeping their protein intake moderate. But, the high fat intake isn’t what defines a keto diet. It’s the low intake of carbs.
Clean Keto: Prioritizing Nutrient-Dense Foods
Clean keto emphasizes whole, nutrient-dense foods. It prioritizes food quality over simply adhering to the traditional keto macronutrient ratios. The traditional keto diet comprises no more than 50 grams of carbs per day, a moderate protein intake of 15-20% of daily calories, and a high fat intake of at least 75% of daily calories.
By restricting carbs, clean keto puts your body into ketosis, a metabolic state in which you start burning fat for energy instead of carbs. This may lead to several potential health benefits, including weight loss, reduced blood sugar levels, and even a lower risk of certain cancers.
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Clean keto consists mainly of whole foods from quality sources, such as grass-fed beef, free-range eggs, wild-caught seafood, olive oil, and non-starchy vegetables. High-carb foods, including grains, rice, potatoes, pastries, bread, pasta, and most fruits, are severely restricted or banned.
Clean keto also minimizes your processed food intake, though it can still be eaten in moderation.
Foods to Enjoy on Clean Keto
Clean keto allows for an array of diverse foods that can be fairly easy to prepare and satisfy your cravings throughout the day.
Here are a few examples of scrumptious foods to eat on this diet:
- High fat protein sources: grass-fed beef, chicken thighs, salmon, tuna, shellfish, eggs, bacon (in moderation), full-fat Greek yogurt, and cottage cheese
- Low-carb vegetables: cabbage, broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, spinach, kale, green beans, peppers, zucchini, cauliflower, and celery
- Limited portions of berries: strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries
- Fat sources: grass-fed butter, ghee, avocados, coconut oil, MCT oil, olive oil, sesame oil, and walnut oil
- Nuts, nut butters, and seeds: walnuts, pecans, almonds, and hazelnuts, as well as hemp, flax, sunflower, chia, and pumpkin seeds
- Cheeses (in moderation): Cheddar, cream cheese, Gouda, Swiss, blue cheese, and manchego
- Beverages: water, sparkling water, diet soda, green tea, black tea, coffee, protein shakes, milk alternatives, vegetable juice, and kombucha
Dirty Keto: A More Lenient Approach
Dirty keto, also known as lazy keto, takes a more relaxed approach to food choices. While still low in carbs and high in fat, it allows for highly processed and packaged foods. It focuses purely on keeping your carb intake low, regardless of the quality of the food source.
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It’s popular among individuals who want to achieve ketosis without spending lots of time prepping clean keto meals. For instance, someone on dirty keto might order a double bacon cheeseburger without the bun instead of grilling a grass-fed steak and making a low carb salad with a high fat dressing. As with any trending buzzword or fad diet, the emergence of new food products on the market is quick to follow the spike in popularity. Food packages have been splattered with fat-free, gluten-free, and vegan for quite some time now. And more recently, keto can be found front and center.
While you can technically attain ketosis and garner some of the keto diet’s benefits using this approach, you may miss out on several key nutrients and increase your risk of disease.
Potential Pitfalls of Dirty Keto
- Contains processed foods: Dirty keto is also called lazy keto, as it allows for highly processed and packaged foods.
- May lack micronutrients: Dirty keto foods are lacking in vitamins and minerals that your body requires. By choosing processed foods over nutritious, whole foods, you may become deficient in micronutrients like calcium, magnesium, zinc, folic acid, and vitamins C, D, and K.
Key Differences Between Clean and Dirty Keto
The dirty and clean versions of the keto diet differ vastly in food quality. Whereas the clean keto diet focuses on high fat, nutritious, whole foods - with only the occasional processed item - the dirty version allows for large quantities of packaged convenience foods. For example, people following clean keto fill up on non-starchy vegetables like spinach, kale, broccoli, and asparagus - while those on dirty keto may eat very few veggies at all.
Dirty keto also tends to be significantly higher in sodium. Dirty keto meals are often high in sodium. For people who are sensitive to salt, high sodium intake is associated with high blood pressure and an increased risk of heart disease. Processed foods are also likely to have far more additives and fewer micronutrients your body needs. What’s more, they are associated with several adverse health effects, including weight gain, diabetes, overall mortality, and heart disease.
| Feature | Clean Keto | Dirty Keto |
|---|---|---|
| Food Quality | Whole, nutrient-dense foods | Processed, packaged foods |
| Macronutrients | Strict adherence to keto ratios | Focus on carb restriction, less on food quality |
| Micronutrients | Rich in vitamins and minerals | May be deficient in essential nutrients |
| Sodium Content | Typically lower | Often higher |
| Vegetable Intake | High consumption of non-starchy vegetables | Often low |
Potential Benefits of Keto Diets
Most studies on Keto don’t focus on food quality when structuring ketogenic diets for participants. Instead, they focus on how carb restriction affects a variety of health outcomes. Some potential Keto-related health benefits include:
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- Fat loss and weight loss in both obese and non-obese populations.
- Reversing type 2 diabetes.
- Inflammation control.
- Hunger control.
- Potential therapy for neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.
Weight Loss on Keto
The mechanisms by which Keto promotes weight loss are largely independent of food quality. For instance, low insulin facilitates fat burning, especially the burning of visceral belly fat. And you don’t need to eat whole foods to keep insulin low. You just need to restrict carbs.
Lowering carbs can also curb your appetite. Keeping carbs low reduces spikes and dips in blood sugar, so you aren’t crashing, listless, and hangry at 4 PM. A Keto diet has also been shown to lower the hunger hormone ghrelin.
Why Dirty Keto Might Not Be the Best Choice
Generally speaking, it’s best to avoid dirty keto due to its adverse long-term health effects, such as an increased risk of disease and nutrient deficiencies. Dirty Keto is called dirty Keto for a reason. It’s a sub-optimal way to eat.
The Problem with Vegetable Oils
On a Keto diet, you consume most of your calories from fat. The type of fat, however, is up to you. A dirty Keto diet leans heavily into a group of fats known as vegetable oils. These oils include soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, and canola oil.
Veggie oils are high in an omega-6 polyunsaturated fat (PUFA) called linoleic acid. While small portions of linoleic acid are healthy, excess consumption of this PUFA, researchers believe, is a key driver of the American obesity epidemic. Why? Because consuming too much linoleic acid creates inflammatory conditions that drive fat storage. This has been shown in mice. Cooking with vegetable oils is dangerous too. At high heat, the fragile PUFAs oxidize, creating compounds called oxidized lipids linked to heart disease.
The Importance of Micronutrients
If your Keto plate is devoid of low-carb vegetables, you’re probably not getting enough vitamins and minerals. Non-starchy veggies like spinach, kale, asparagus, broccoli, and cabbage are some of the most nutrient-dense foods around. These plant foods are rich in folate, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and a variety of phytonutrients with health benefits researchers are still unraveling.
Take folate, for example. This B vitamin (vitamin B9) is crucial for energy production, nervous system health, cardiovascular support, and reproductive health. The best natural sources of folate are lentils, but lentils have too many carbs to be Keto. That leaves Keto folks with spinach, asparagus, beef liver, and broccoli. Unfortunately, a dirty Keto diet spurns these foods. And that’s just folate. How many other vitamin and mineral deficiencies would occur on dirty Keto? How many health problems would result from these deficiencies? Best not to find out.
The Role of Fiber
If you don’t eat vegetables on Keto, you won’t get much fiber into your system. Digestive consequences may follow. Since fiber helps with bowel regularity, avoiding this indigestible carbohydrate can lead to constipation.
Avoiding fiber may also negatively impact your gut microbiome. Fiber is indigestible through normal routes, but it is digestible by gut bacteria. When gut bacteria digest fiber (especially soluble fiber) they produce anti-inflammatory compounds like butyrate.
Long-Term Health Considerations
Many of these negative outcomes stem from sugary drinks and high-carb staples like hamburger buns, french fries, potato chips, ice cream, and cookies. However, studies have not shown whether eating fast food and processed snacks in a ketogenic state is any better for you. Growth hormones and antibiotics are often found in factory farmed beef, chicken, and pork products. Antibiotics are given to animals in cramped quarters to prevent diseases and infections from spreading. The CDC says antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest public health challenges today.
Unhealthy, processed, refined vegetable oils like soybean oil, canola oil, and corn oil extend the shelf life of packaged foods and make their consistency more palatable. Soybean and corn, the most commonly used oils, are among the top GMO crops in the United States. Scientists discovered that mice fed a diet high in soybean oil had higher rates of obesity and weight gain, and they also showed signs of insulin resistance and diabetes. Many people are sensitive to MSG and don’t realize it. Americans now consume five times more artificial food dyes than when they were first approved by the FDA in the early 1960s. Phthalates are a group of chemicals used in food handling and plastic food packaging.
Practical Tips for a Healthier Keto Approach
A nutrient-dense, healthy keto diet doesn’t have to be complex or time consuming. If you “save up” all your carbs for the day for a beer or a few bites of bread, you’re still technically under your carb limit. Dirty keto is a temporary fix if you’re traveling or unable to cook for yourself in the short term. However, it’s not a good strategy for better health and weight loss in the long run. Dirty keto doesn’t create a true lifestyle change, especially if you can blame fast food restaurants and junk food for your initial weight gain. It gets expensive fast. The average American spends over $3,000 a year dining out. You’re more likely to fall off the wagon. It may sound like a dream to never have to cook or clean up the dishes again, and you may be legitimately excited to eat out at your favorite guilty pleasure drive-thrus on keto. But this novelty will wear off.
This may lessen some of the initial pressure of buying, prepping, cooking, and cleaning up every single day of your new healthy life. Once you make a few of these recipes and beef up your cooking skills, it will be easier and faster to fit meal prep into your hectic schedule. Most people don’t have the luxury of consulting with a dietitian or nutritionist, much less hiring a private chef to cook all their healthy keto meals. Choose which recipes you want to be shipped to your home and all the ingredients and instructions to make said meal will show up at your door.
Nut butter featuring healthy fats from macadamia nuts, cashews, and MCT oil is a must-have. Instant keto coffee with MCT oil is the best way to give your caffeine routine a keto upgrade. Keto bars are the perfect companion for on-the-go keto dieters. One bar has 19 grams of fat, 10 grams of collagen protein, and just 3 grams of net carbs. Keto micronutrient powder packs pure, plant-sourced nutrition from 26 different fruits and veggies so you’re not missing out on essential vitamins and minerals.
The 80/20 Rule
Transitioning into ketosis can be challenging for the first couple of weeks. The drastic reduction in carbohydrates can come as a shock to the body as it adapts to burning ketones for energy instead of glucose. Some people experience withdrawal-like symptoms referred to as the “Keto Flu.” For this reason, we think it is acceptable to eat ANY kind of keto when you are first starting. Occasional dirty keto is also okay when you are having a craving or “cheat day.” Stick to the 80/20 rule and you should be on the right track to maintaining to a healthy diet while on keto. Just remember - on any diet - the nutrient value and quality of your food is essential to avoiding negative long-term health effects, such as an increased risk of disease and nutrient deficiencies.