The keto diet/ketogenic diet is a unique weight loss technique that heavily regulates carbohydrate intake and emphasizes fat in the diet. Unlike many other fad diets, the keto diet is tried and tested and has been around for decades.
It also offers certain health benefits that may be of interest to people who cannot consume carbohydrates too much, anyway. Many types of research show that the keto diet can help reduce some symptoms of metabolic syndrome and help improve your wellness in a general sense.
The keto diet is promising in countering chronic and degenerative medical conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, cancer, and diabetes.
Are Rice Cakes Allowed on Keto Diet?
Following the basic protocols of the keto diet, we can’t say that rice cakes can be part of this diet because rice is naturally rich in carbohydrates, and the type of carbs in rice cakes are easily converted into sugar. Despite having fewer than 50 calories per serving (with an average of 35 calories per serving), strict followers of the keto diet will not touch this food item any more than they would handle added sugar.
The only time perhaps that this would be allowed would be during the window periods in the week where glucose is replenished. Still, at the same time, it’s going to be challenging to balance the carbohydrates out since rice cakes are not filling, nor do they satiate the appetite.
As you may already know, rice cakes are manufactured in such a way that they are mostly air, so if you bit into a few, you might end up consuming 100+ calories or more without feeling full.
From a weight loss point of view, this is very problematic because it’s already tough modifying your diet, so having food items that do not satiate the hunger or appetite might contribute to you not succeeding with your diet in the first place.
Are Rice Cakes Low Carb?
Compared to bread and pastries, rice cakes are the holy grail of low carb because one serving will only provide you with 7.3 grams of carbohydrates. To put things into context, diabetic patients are advised to avoid any beverage or food that contains more than 10 grams of sugar or carbohydrates per serving. With commercial rice cakes like Quaker Rice Cakes, you will need to eat at least two total servings before your breach the ten-gram mark.
Another good mark for rice cakes is they are naturally healthy for the body, though they do not contain as many nutrients as one would hope. And since rice cakes are low fat and high in carbs, they do not align with diets that emphasize fat more than carbs.
The general belief here is that carbs turn into fat, and eating fat turns the body into a fat-burning furnace capable of reducing fat stores rather than increasing them. This is an excellent approach to weight loss, but unfortunately, rice cakes are not part of this formulation for apparent reasons.
