Vegetables are full of nutrients we need for good health, including vitamins, folate, dietary fiber, and potassium. A veggie-rich diet can control your weight and even ward off conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Yet not all vegetables are as keto-friendly as others. What are some low-carb vegetables to add to your shopping list today?
The following vegetables are all keto-friendly:
- Zucchini
- Artichokes
- Cucumber
- Cabbage
- Mushroom
- Eggplant
- Lettuce
- Spinach
- Onions
- Celery
- Tomatoes
- Garlic
In this article, we’ll talk further about why the above 12 veggies are so delectably good for keto dieters. We’ll also present a list of vegetables to cut back on or cut out entirely so you can stay in ketosis!
12 Low-Carb Keto Vegetables to Incorporate Into Your Diet
Zucchini
The summer squash known as zucchini has a somewhat bitter yet sweet taste. Although you won’t make zucchini bread much as a keto dieter, you can use zucchini for so much more. For instance, when you crave pasta, make zoodles. You can also bake zucchini with some parmesan cheese.
One medium zucchini that’s 196 grams has six grams of carbs, so go ahead, eat the whole thing! After all, zucchini is packed with thiamine, vitamin B6, phosphorus, copper, folate, vitamin K, magnesium, potassium, vitamin C, manganese, vitamin A, and dietary fiber.
Artichokes
For a more toothsome vegetable, you can’t go wrong with artichokes. A medium-sized whole artichoke that’s 128 grams contains 13 grams of carbs. Artichokes aren’t exactly the lowest-carb vegetable, but they’re certainly not high-carb either.
Artichokes taste delicious when baked, stuffed, braised, or grilled. You can also steam them and serve them as a side dish. Cooking will soften the artichoke and make it taste milder. When consumed raw or lightly cooked, artichokes are bitter.
A great source of vitamin C and magnesium, artichokes also contain 4.2 grams of protein and seven grams of dietary fiber per medium artichoke.
Cucumbers
If you’re looking to cut back on calories as well as carbs on your keto diet, cucumbers are one of the best veggies to eat. They contain only six grams of carbs per medium cucumber (left unpeeled) as well as 30 calories.
Although they don’t taste like much, cucumbers are not nutritionally void. They’re a great source of vitamin K, containing 57 percent of your recommended daily serving. Cucumbers are also full of magnesium, vitamin C, and dietary fiber.
Cabbage
How does southern fried cabbage with bacon sound for dinner? Yes, you can prepare a delish recipe like that on the keto diet, and the light meal contains only 143 calories.
Per leaf, cabbage has 0.9 grams of carbs. Since one cabbage leaf is a 15-gram serving, it’s quite a significant amount.
Cabbage isn’t much of a nutritional powerhouse, containing 14 percent of your recommended daily serving of vitamin C and no other vitamins and minerals. Thus, make sure you supplement your diet with other nutritional sources.
Mushrooms
If you’ve been chasing after the flavors of umami with your diet, mushrooms are what you’re looking for. Their all at once sweet and earthy flavor is delightful. Mushrooms also make an awesome substitute for meat, as they’re chunky and thick.
Even still, a medium mushroom that’s 18 grams has only 0.6 grams of carbs! Packed full of pantothenic acid, niacin, and riboflavin, which are all B-vitamins, mushrooms are always a healthy choice.
You can explore the world of mushrooms yourself in such tasty keto recipes as creamy garlic mushrooms (with bacon if you want to treat yourself) or sautéed mushrooms.
Eggplant
Consumable raw or cooked, eggplant is another low-carb vegetable to add to your shopping list immediately. A cup of cubed eggplants that’s 82 grams contains 4.8 grams of carbs. That’s nothing, especially if your carb load for the day is around 40 grams.
Cooking eggplant makes the flavor milder, so it’s always recommended. If you don’t cook it, then eggplant can taste rather bitter. In a serving of eggplant, you’re ingesting 188 milligrams of potassium, 2.5 grams of dietary fiber, and five percent of your recommended daily limit of vitamin B6.
Lettuce
Like cabbage, lettuce is very calorically light. Its flavor is more like a cucumber in that it’s barely there. You know what else is barely there? The carbs. A cup of shredded lettuce that’s 36 grams has but one gram of carbs. Yes, one gram!
You’ll want to use lettuce in all your lunch, dinner, and keto snack recipes, whipping up dishes like club lettuce wraps, chicken taco lettuce wraps, or keto-friendly salads.
Spinach
The sharp yet mild flavor of spinach livens up any keto salad. This is yet another green vegetable that’s very low-carb, containing 0.4 grams of carbs in a cup. Spinach also has 0.9 grams of protein and 0.1 grams of fat in that same serving size.
The dietary fiber in spinach is excellent, and this dark green veggie also contains plenty of potassium, folate, iron, vitamin K, vitamin C, and vitamin A. You can sauté it on its own or with some heavy cream, cream cheese, and butter, then finish with a dash of parmesan cheese.
Onions
Although they can make you cry when you prepare them, onions are a well-rounded part of any healthy diet. The cylindrical veggie contains vitamin C, iron, vitamin B6, magnesium, and calcium.
One medium onion that’s two and a half inches in diameter contains 10 grams of carbs and 44 calories. You can make your own version of Outback’s famous Blooming Onion at home, and yes, it’s keto. Onion rings can also be keto, especially by baking them or putting them in an air fryer.
Celery
Mmm, don’t you just want to bite into a stalk of celery? You should! With only three grams of carbs per cup (101 grams), two grams of dietary fiber, and 37 percent of your recommended daily value of vitamin K, celery is a nutritional dynamo.
You can use celery as the basis for a keto-friendly cheesy baked dish. You can also stuff celery with bacon and cheese or even blend it down into a creamy soup. Since celery contains 96 percent water, eat it to your heart’s content!
Tomatoes
Okay, so tomatoes are technically a fruit, but many people consider them vegetables. A whole medium-sized tomato that’s 123 grams contains just 4.8 grams of carbs, so tomatoes fit well into your keto diet. They’re also rich in vitamin B9, vitamin K1, potassium, and vitamin C.
You can make your own homemade tomato sauce, stuff tomatoes with cheese, or prepare a roasted tomato soup with a beautiful autumnal color. The possibilities are endless so you can always fill yourself up for lunch, dinner, or snack time!
Garlic
Some people can’t stand the stench of garlic. If you don’t mind it so much, then you’ll be pleased to discover this vegetable has only 2.9 grams of carbs per clove.
If you need more vitamin B6 in your diet, garlic is a great place to get it. You’re also consuming plenty of copper, iron, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin C when you eat garlic.
Do you need some recipe ideas? Well, keto-friendly garlic bread is one such way to ingest more garlic (that’s right, keto-friendly garlic bread does exist). You can also whip up some keto garlic parmesan chicken.
4 Vegetables to Limit or Avoid on Keto
If you’re still feeling hungry, make sure you avoid filling up on the following vegetables. They’re to be eaten sparingly if at all to help you control your carb load.
Peas
You’re sure you’re reading this wrong. Peas look so harmless, there’s no way they could contain a lot of carbs. Yet you’d be surprised! A cup of peas, which is 145 grams, has 21 grams of carbs.
Peas are legumes, which are nutritionally valuable but dense. Make sure your diet is sufficient in magnesium, iron, potassium, and folate if you’re skipping the peas on your keto diet.
Parsnips
Parsnips are a Eurasian root vegetable. They’re a relative of parsley and celery despite looking like a radish. Like many root vegetables, parsnips contain a lot of carbs. In a 133-gram serving, which is a cup of sliced radishes, you’d ingest 24 grams of carbs by enjoying some parsnips.
That’s almost half your carb load if you’re restricting yourself to no more than 50 carbs a day! You’d have to tread very carefully for the rest of the day if you decided to have parsnips with dinner.
Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes
Here’s another root vegetable that unsurprisingly has a lot of carbs: the potato. A medium-sized potato that’s up to 3 ¼ inches in diameter contains 37 grams of carbs in a 213-gram serving. Even if you ate a small potato that was 2 ½ inches in diameter, the spud still contains 30 grams of carbs.
Do you prefer sweet potatoes over regular ones? You’ll still have to watch your quantities on the keto diet. A cup of cubed sweet potato, which is 133 grams, contains 27 grams of carbs.
Yams
Finishing the root vegetable trifecta is the yam. Yams and sweet potatoes are not quite the same, as sweet potatoes come from dicot plants and yams from monocots. You can tell them apart easily enough in other ways. Just look at the skin! Yams have brown skin and white flesh.
Yams contain 27 grams of carbs in a 133-gram serving. Thus, even if you don’t know whether the spud in your shopping cart is a sweet potato or a yam, they’re both skippable on a keto diet.
Conclusion
The wide world of vegetables is not entirely keto-friendly, although it’d be nice if it was. You must tread carefully around some vegetables, especially root veggies such as yams, potatoes, and parsnips.
Many other vegetables though are allowable on the keto diet. Try them all today!
