Is Fattoush Salad Keto-Friendly? No, it isn’t. Coated with pitta chips, Fattoush Salad is not keto-friendly. However, with a few tweaks, you can soon enjoy your favorite Middle Eastern salad at home or at a restaurant. You really do not have to miss out on any of your favorite dishes on keto.
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What Is Fattoush Salad?
A fattoush salad is a refreshing Middle Eastern salad containing cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, with spiced fried pita croutons and dressing that usually consists of oil and spices such as parsley, sumac, and garlic.
Some fattoush salads will have other vegetables as well, such as peppers and radishes.
What Is The Nutritional Value Of A Typical Fattoush Salad?
When looking at an authentic Middle Eastern fattoush salad, the approximate nutritional value would be:
- Between 200-300 calories per serving
- 16 grams of carbohydrates
- 3-4 grams of protein
- 3 grams of fiber
- 50 milligrams of calcium
- 1-2 grams of iron
The nutritional values can go up or down depending on how much you deviate from an authentic recipe.
So, let’s have a look, is Fattoush salad keto friendly?
How Many Net Carbs Are There In Fattoush Salad?
Depending on where you get your fattoush salad from, the nutritional content can vary slightly. In a typical, traditional fattoush salad, you will find between 10 and 12 net carbs.
While it is a healthy salad, it is pretty high in carbs.
Is Fattoush Salad Keto Friendly?
A fattoush salad can be keto-friendly with some minor modifications. For example, you might want to substitute the pita chips for Edam crisps, so you don’t miss out on the crunchy texture of the pitta chips.
Try breaking some shop-bought keto crackers onto your salad for crunch.
If you are eating this out, you can always ask them to leave the pitta chips off, as hard as that is to do, I know!
Is Fattoush Salad Dressing Keto?
Making your own keto-friendly dressing with olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, sumac, and garlic powder will give you that authentic fattoush salad taste without potentially high-carb additives if you go with a store-bought dressing.
If you’re eating out, try and ring head or ask them what they are using in their dressing, most chefs are surprisingly eager to talk about their trade.
Check out some of our favorite pitta chips alternatives below.
What Are The Health Benefits Of Fattoush Salad?
A fattoush salad is a healthy meal or side dish, consisting of many delicious and healthy vegetables. It is also not a high calorie salad, and is suitable or adaptable to many diets and food preferences, including the keto diet.
The vegetables that go into a fattoush salad are also good sources of Vitamins C and A, and the salad gives you a decent amount of calcium and protein.
Discover the best keto-friendly salads to include in your diet without worrying about hidden carbs.
Fattoush & Keto
If you’re new to keto and want a bit more information, check out our keto beginners guide.
As a quick summary, if you need it, the keto (also known as the ketogenic diet) is a low-carb, high-fat diet.
The whole concept of the keto diet is that your body transitions from burning glucose, in simple terms, sugars or carbohydrates, to burning fat as its primary fuel source.
For a keto diet, people will restrict their macros to eating;
- 70% of their calories from fat
- 25% from protein
- 5% from carbohydrates
Sticking to these macros for a period of time will put your body into a state of ketosis. Ketosis is when your body has transitioned from burning carbohydrates as its primary fuel source to burning fat for fuel. It is at this point that you will start to see and feel the benefits of the keto diet.
There are a lot of new terms and abbreviations that you may come across, sometimes it can feel like a new language that you need to learn. In order to help you out and keep you on the right track, we have created a keto terms and keto abbreviations guide, bookmark these to make your keto journey easier.
Some people can be put off the keto diet because of the side effects, however, these are only short-lived and the health benefits of keto far outweigh the side effects.
One of the main benefits which attract people to the keto diet is that it can cause significant reductions in insulin levels (by up to 75%) and blood sugar levels, which can be attractive to those that struggle with diabetes, amongst other health complaints.
Staying hydrated on the keto diet is really important, for more on how much water you should be drinking, check out our guide to staying hydrated on the keto diet.
If you’re planning on dehydrating yourself(!) and drinking alcohol on the keto diet, check out our ultimate guide to drinking alcohol on a keto diet. Also, you may be interested in, how to recover from a cheat day.
Summary: Is Fattoush Salad Keto Friendly?
No, traditional Fattoush salad is not keto friendly. However, if you are making it at home, you can soon substitute the pitta chips for keto chips. This will ensure that you are still getting your crispy crunch on your salad without all of the carbs.
