If you have been on top of your new product game then you may have seen that there is a new Keto Coffee on the market.  VPX, creators of the popular energy drink Bang, have recently released the preorder for their new Keto Coffee product.

I have actually had a few Bang energy drinks in my day.  When I was in grad school, I was personal training from 5-8 in the morning, researching in the lab from 9-5, and then personal training again from 5-9 pm.  I was always running on caffeine so these incredible tasting 300mg of caffeine energy drinks were one of my go-to caffeine sources in a pinch.  Since then I have really focused on lowering my overall caffeine intake and now I try to stay under 200mg for the day.

What’s up with Bang Keto Coffee?

I’ll be pretty straight forward with you guys and I mean no disrespect to the company but I am not a fan of this product.  I will say the product tastes incredible, no doubt there. But that is no surprise since all of Bangs products taste pretty great. However, lately I have put a little more focus into quality of foods and ingredients and have become a little more of a stickler about what I put in my body.  I think that is a good decision, if you do not, that’s fine.  But here are my thoughts on this product.

Food processing

As with most packaged products, one of the first things that turns me off to this product is the length of the nutrition label.  I understand that to make some products you may have to use certain emulsifiers or additives, but the amount contained in this product is more than I would like to consume regularly.

A especially don’t like the sodium tripolyphosporate.  I am working hard to improve my knowledge of food manufacturing so I can better do these reviews.  But my current knowledge tells me that this is a food additive that when consumed in high amounts could be neurotoxic (toxic to the central and peripheral nervous system).  Yes it is unlikely that the amount contained in this product is extremely harmful, but consumed over time it may be and either way, I don’t want to put it in my body.

Another ingredient that I really don’t like is carrageen, which is a food additive that I recently learned of from Ali Miller’s book, The Anti-Anxiety Diet (Support us and get it here free with this offer). Carrageen can destroy the mucosal membranes in our intestines, making our guts more permeable, a.k.a. leaky gut.  Not something I want!

What about the MCTs?

I think one of the big things that disappointed me about this product was the C8 MCT Oil.  C8 is one of the technical 4 MCTs and this particular MCT is even more rapidly digested compared to the primary MCTs we find in MCT and Coconut Oil.  This is the ingredient that would make a coffee product a “Keto Coffee”.  However, there is only 2.5g of fat in the Bang Keto Coffee meaning that there is even less than 2.5g of C8 MCTs in this product, not nearly enough to get any of its benefits.

The Protein

This product uses whey protein, one of the two main proteins found in milk (casein is the other). I do think that whey protein can be okay for some but I am personally not a huge fan of whey protein concentrate and sweet cream which typically contain a lot more lactose. I really think lactose should be limited or even avoided for some people.

The Fiber

Finally, this product uses soluble corn fiber which I currently do not have a stance on since some research states that it can be keto-friendly and others does not and I know that some of the research that has been published is not that reliable which makes it questionable whether or not it is an ingredient we should be consuming on Keto or not.

The Real Keto Coffee

So, what do I recommend instead?  Just put MCTs in your coffee. MCTs and caffeine is an approach I use in the morning that I call fat fasting.  The goal here is to help stimulate ketone production during the fasting window to better improve cognitive approach.  I know this product claims that caffeine can increase ketone levels, but I don’t want to consume 300mg of caffeine. I’d rather increase my ketones with less than a 100mg of caffeine and a solid dose of MCTs! Here is an experiment I did with this approach.