Welcome to ‘BUILD A KETO MEAL’ planner!

The KDRN are delighted to be launching the first visual ketogenic portion-size guide. It’s a resource designed to allow patients and their families to build meals electronically, whilst being able to visualise the amount of each food they are adding to their meal.

When starting Ketogenic Dietary Therapy (KDT), there is a lot of new information to consider, and meal planning for the first time can seem daunting. Most patients or carers at the beginning of their KDT journey are not used to weighing or estimating the weights of different foods. Using this tool within teaching sessions, can help families to plan meals for the first time, whilst being able to see how much of each ingredient they are including.

When planning meals at home, rather than realising mid-way through cooking that an amount of food in a planned recipe is a lot smaller or larger than expected, this programme allows portion sizes to be easily adjusted in advance, before starting cooking.

For some people, the thought of starting a ketogenic diet for themselves or a loved one, can seem particularly overwhelming if they are needing to draw upon numeracy skills they perhaps have not used since their school days. 40% of adults in the UK do not feel confident working with numbers, and for some this may be a barrier to accessing KDT for themselves or their children. This resource can take the ‘maths’ out of meal planning, as the macronutrient totals of the combined ingredients are automatically calculated.

We have not included branded products, as individual formulations may change; instead the values displayed are an average of all brands and varieties of the ingredient listed.

Many thanks goes to Matthew’s Friends Ketogenic Dietary Therapies Charity for their support, funding and organisation of this project. With thanks also going to Vitaflo for their sponsorship.

We hope you find it a valuable addition to your practice,and hope the families you support can find it useful.

Nicole Mills – Paediatric Dietitian
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
On behalf of the KDRN (Ketogenic Dietitians Research Network) Get Started