You might be wondering, “Is Popcorn Keto Friendly.” Nothing is better during a nice movie than diving into a bucket full of popcorn. However, when you’re on a keto diet, you want to avoid anything high in carbs. So is popcorn keto-friendly? Today, we will find out by digging into the nutrition facts for popular popcorn.
Corn is one of the most widely grown vegetables in the world, and popcorn is one of the most popular snacks in the US. The salt and buttery flavoring on the delicious, light, and fluffy popcorn is to die for.
However, popcorn is made out of corn (obviously), and corn contains carbohydrates. So we often wonder: Is popcorn keto-friendly?
Popcorn
Serving Size: 1 cup
keto approved
Net Carbs
4.8g
Protein
1g
Fat
0.4g
Calories
31
Table of Contents
About Popcorn
Popcorn is packed with good fiber, some antioxidants, and nutrients. Most of the time, we consume our popcorn with butter and salt. This would be considered unhealthy on most diets, but on keto, this is a good mixture of macronutrients. We’ll look at a fairly popular (and delicious) popcorn, Orville Redenbacher’s Ultimate Butter Microwave Popcorn. This popcorn contains 2g of fat, about 1g of protein, about 1g of fiber, and 3.5 net carbohydrates per cup.
If you’re new to keto or low-carb diets, it can be difficult to identify which foods are higher in carbohydrates. To stay in ketosis, you probably only consume around 30g of net carbohydrates daily.
That doesn’t give you much room for excess carbs in your diet. However, you may crave some of the snacks that you used to eat before starting keto.
This is normal for everyone. In most cases, we eat alternatives to our favorite snacks. However, is popcorn keto-friendly?
Is Popcorn Keto Friendly?
Knowing all that, let’s answer, “Is popcorn keto-friendly.” The short answer is “maybe.” Your average popcorn contains about 3.5g of carbohydrates, which is pretty low, but only for a cup.
If you’re like me, you will probably consume 1/2 to a whole bag of popcorn. That’s about 5 cups and would be too many carbs for a keto diet. So limiting yourself to 1-2 cups of popcorn is keto-friendly.
Eating popcorn in moderation will probably not kick you out of ketosis. I recommend keeping it as a snack for special occasions like movie nights.
It comes down to your macronutrient levels for the day. How many carbs did you consume, and how many more can you eat? I find that most days, I could trade some of my carb foods for a nice snack if I chose to. So that means I could skip something to have a few cups of popcorn on keto. If you have the carbs allocated in your diet, then eat the popcorn.
The carb counts should stay the same between brands unless you try to get something sweetened versus salted. You will want to avoid sweet popcorn on the keto diet and stick to the buttery and salty brands. This means no caramel corn.
There are also some low-carb popcorn flavorings that you can find online or at your local grocery store that might help enhance the flavor of plain air-popped popcorn.
