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If you’ve followed keto or low-carb diets for any length of time, you’ve probably seen allulose show up in everything from protein bars to ice cream. It has become popular because it does something many older sugar substitutes struggle with: it behaves a lot like actual sugar. Allulose can add bulk, brown during cooking, help keep baked goods moist, and improve the texture of frozen desserts while contributing far fewer calories than table sugar.

There is just one slightly confusing problem: allulose actually is a sugar.

That distinction has suddenly become much more important because companies selling foods and drinks containing allulose are being sued over claims like “zero sugar” and “sugar free.” Costco is one of the latest companies pulled into the argument over its Kirkland Signature Hydration Electrolyte Drink Mix, but lawsuits involving Chobani, David Protein, Liquid Death, Liquid I.V., WK Kellogg, KIND and other brands have raised the same basic question.

So how can allulose chemically be a sugar while a Nutrition Facts label can still show 0 grams of sugar? The answer involves the difference between chemistry, metabolism, FDA labeling policy, and what companies are allowed to claim on the front of a package.

Continue reading “Is Allulose Sugar? Why “Zero Sugar” Foods Are Being Sued”

If you’ve followed keto or low-carb diets for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with the usual cast of sugar substitutes. Stevia and monk fruit are intensely sweet plant-derived options. Erythritol is a sugar alcohol that became practically unavoidable during peak keto. Allulose has become increasingly popular in newer low-sugar products, especially when manufacturers need something that behaves a little more like real sugar.

Sweelin is much stranger.

Rather than being a sugar, sugar alcohol, or plant extract, Sweelin is an intensely sweet protein developed by Israeli food-tech company Amai Proteins. It’s based on monellin, a naturally occurring sweet protein found in the serendipity berry of West Africa, but Amai has modified the protein and produces it through precision fermentation so that it can better tolerate the heat, acidity, and other abuse involved in modern food manufacturing.

It’s also absurdly sweet. Depending on how sweetness is measured, Sweelin is described as roughly 3,000 to 3,500 times sweeter than sugar by weight, which means manufacturers need very little of it to sweeten a product. The FDA completed its review of Amai’s GRAS notice in February 2026, Singapore authorized it several months later, and Israel became the third market to clear Sweelin for commercial use at the end of August.

Sweelin still isn’t something you can buy next to stevia at your local grocery store, but that may change as food manufacturers begin experimenting with it. Since this is a keto site, the more interesting question is obvious: does a protein-based sweetener that barely affected blood sugar in an early human trial actually make sense for keto?

Continue reading “Sweelin Is Emerging as a New Low-Sugar Sweetener to Watch”

If you’ve been eating low carb for a while, you already know the keto snack category is a mixed bag.

Some products are genuinely convenient and make sticking to your macros easier. Others are tiny, overpriced bags of disappointment with “KETO” slapped on the front like that alone is supposed to make them worth buying. And if you’ve been around this space since the original keto boom, you’ve probably also noticed that plenty of once-popular products have quietly disappeared into my Keto Product Graveyard.

Instead of giving you a giant random roundup of every low-carb snack I could think of, I’m focusing on ready-made keto snacks that are actually useful, including options for sweet cravings, crunchy snacks, and easy high-protein picks. I use “store-bought” here to distinguish them from homemade recipes: many are available at grocery stores or big-box retailers, while others may be easier to order online. Perfect Keto Bars, for example, are primarily sold online. Since this is a pescatarian keto site, I’m also keeping the list friendly to people who don’t eat meat.

Continue reading “Best Keto Snacks to Buy in 2026: 20 Store-Bought Picks That Are Actually Worth It”

Sardines have never exactly been considered glamorous. They are tiny oily fish packed into tins, sometimes with their skin and bones intact, and opening a can at work is one of the easiest ways to offend your coworkers. Apparently, none of that matters anymore.

Sardines are having a viral moment in 2026, driven in part by “sardinemaxxing,” a social media trend centered on intentionally eating more sardines. The term is being used pretty loosely. For some people, sardinemaxxing simply means adding canned sardines to meals more often because they are high in protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and several important micronutrients. For others, it has become tangled up with the much more extreme “sardine fast,” where sardines are essentially the only food consumed for a short period. Those are not quite the same thing.

Sardinemaxxing also does not appear to have an official diet plan, required number of cans, or precise length of time. Despite some very enthusiastic interpretations of the memetic term “maxxing,” you do not need to spend seven days living entirely sardines. Here is what the trend actually means, why sardines are suddenly everywhere, how it overlaps with keto and fasting, and whether there is any good reason to start eating more of them. Continue reading “What Is Sardinemaxxing? The Viral Sardine Diet Trend Explained”

If you followed a keto diet around 2018 to 2021, you probably remember when the ice cream aisle suddenly became very interested in your macros.

Rebel Creamery, Halo Top Keto, Enlightened Keto, Keto Pint, and a growing assortment of store-brand competitors promised something that had previously seemed impossible: ice cream with only a few net carbs per serving. At the height of the keto craze, there were enough options that deciding which low-carb pint to buy was actually a problem.

Things look very different in 2026. Halo Top’s Keto Series has disappeared from its current lineup. Enlightened has paused production. Several smaller brands have vanished. Wink Frozen Desserts, which I reviewed years ago, is long gone. And now Rebel Creamery has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Rebel’s bankruptcy does not mean the company has shut down, and it would be misleading to blame its financial problems entirely on declining interest in keto. A nearly $24 million court judgment involving its packaging played a very large role. But the timing makes Rebel’s bankruptcy an interesting moment to look at the category as a whole.

Continue reading “What Happened to Keto Ice Cream? Rebel Bankruptcy, Discontinued Brands & What’s Left”

Keto had a very loud moment. If you were anywhere near wellness internet between 2018 and 2020, you could not escape keto bars, keto cookies, keto coffee, exogenous ketones, MCT powder, and endless debates over which foods counted as “really” keto.

Then the market changed. A lot of those products disappeared, which is why I now have a whole Keto Product Graveyard category on this site. That is funny, yes, but it is also useful context. Keto did not vanish because no one cares about weight loss, appetite, blood sugar, or protein anymore. The conversation moved. Right now, a lot of it has moved toward Ozempic and other GLP-1 medications.

Continue reading “Keto vs. Ozempic: What the Keto Diet Can Still Do in the GLP-1 Era”