Last updated on April 11th, 2017
Eating a low-carb high-fat (LCHF) diet as I do, it isn’t good enough to avoid or reduce carbohydrates in my meals. I also need to eat plenty of healthy, tasty, satisfying fat. Ideally, I want the grams of fat in my meals to out-number the grams of carbs and protein combined, and I want the carbs to be minimal. (See my post on the fat-burning quotient.)
Often, that means I need to find a way to add some extra fat. Take my lunch yesterday, pictured below.
The base is three ounces of canned salmon. Depending on the brand and how the fish is packed, canned salmon has a range of values for fat and protein. In the case of yesterday’s lunch, those values were heavily skewed toward the protein: the serving held one-and-a-half grams of fat, zero grams of carbs, and almost twenty grams of protein. Total calories from the salmon were just 90.
What can I say? It was a “premium” brand.
The percent of calories from fat works out to 15%.
That just won’t do for me. The fish was very low carb (in fact, carb-free), but not at all high fat. I’m aiming to get 70-75% of my daily calories from fat. (If you’re new to LCHF eating and aren’t sure why I want to consume that much fat, check out some of the websites on my Resources page, or a book on Amazon.com such as The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living — affiliate link.)
Faced with a nearly fat-free base, there is only one thing to do. Add some good, healthy fat!
Luckily, I had some handy resources to make this a fat-added lunch. I started with mayo. Not a typical store-brand mayo made with soy oil, but a specialty brand made and sold by Primal Kitchen, a company founded by the well-known Paleo author and blogger Mark Sisson.
The Primal Kitchen Mayo is also sold by Thrive Market, at a slightly lower price, which is where I bought mine, using a free trial membership to that site. (For the record, I have received no payment from either Primal Kitchen or Thrive Market.) A search at Amazon.com reveals that Primal Kitchen Mayo (affiliate link) is sold there, too (of course!), but I have yet to buy any via that marketplace .
The Primal Kitchen Mayo is made with avocado oil, organic vinegar, and organic cage-free eggs. It’s free of soy oil and sugar, and it’s simply delicious.
One tablespoon of Primal Kitchen Mayo has 100 calories, 12g fat, 0g carbs, and 0g protein.
That, my friends, is a high-fat sauce!
I mixed two tablespoons of this wonderful mayo with the canned salmon, and then added half of a fresh avocado on the side for good measure. As a result, my luscious lunch’s macro-nutrient values were as follows:
- 430 calories (81% from fat)
- 39g fat
- 7g carbs
- 6g fiber
- 22g protein
Now that is a great LCHF mid-day meal, a fat-added lunch.
I loved every bite of it.
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