Is Mayo Keto? Best Keto Mayonnaise Brands + Easy Recipes

Mayonnaise seems like a no-brainer condiment on keto due to its high fat content and low carb count. But is mayo keto friendly?

You might be surprised to learn the truth about which brands truly are keto friendly mayo, and which brands are inflammation traps in disguise.

Keep reading to learn the best keto mayo, which brands to avoid, and how to mix up tasty keto mayo recipes at home.

 

What is Mayonnaise?

Mayo is a thick sauce that’s typically made from egg yolks, oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and seasonings. The ingredients are emulsified together, which means the oil has to be slowly mixed into the other ingredients, while also mixing everything rapidly at the same time.

This creamy condiment can be store bought, or made at home with an immersion blender.

 

Can You Eat Mayonnaise on the Keto Diet?

When you look at the calories in a tablespoon of mayonnaise (93 calories), you may not view it as the best choice for any diet with weight loss as a goal. However, this creamy condiment can actually be a great way to eat more healthy fats on a low carb diet.

Even better, the carbs in mayonnaise are typically less .1 grams per tablespoon. That’s practically zero – which means you can eat ALL. OF. THE. MAYO. ON. KETO!!

Not so fast, Smokey.

The amount of any food you eat depends on way more than just the carbs – if you want to lose weight, anyway. Like ingredients. Ingredients are super important when it comes to staying in ketosis, keeping inflammation down, and losing weight on a ketogenic diet.

So when it comes to the question, can you have mayo on keto – the answer is: it depends.

 

Keto-Friendly Mayonnaise

A keto-friendly condiment all comes down to the ingredients used. In the case of mayo, it mostly comes down to the choice of oil.

Most grocery store brands use inflammatory oils, such as canola oil, soybean oil, or sunflower oil. This makes most regular mayo you find on store shelves a keto diet no-no.

Even some of the brands who claim to use healthy oils, like olive or avocado, end up using an oil blend. So while you think you’re reaping the health benefits of a healthy avocado oil based version, you’re still eating mostly inflammatory vegetable oils, with some other nasty GMO ingredients blended in.

Other standard ingredients to look out for include added sugar, cane sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and modified corn starch.

And remember, just because a brand boasts of all organic ingredients, that doesn’t mean they don’t use some of the bad stuff in their low carb condiments. Always read the label closely before making a choice.

The good news is there are a few good store options that only use real ingredients that are keto approved.

 

Best Store Bought Keto Mayonnaise

Let’s say you’re not ambitious enough to make your own keto mayo at home… There has to be a better alternative to row upon row of inflammatory options at the grocery store, right?

Thankfully there are at least a few brands who use simple ingredients; brands who aren’t telling a big fat lie when it comes to their version of avocado oil mayonnaise. (Here’s looking at you Kraft, tricky food processor that you are).

 

Sir Kensington Mayonnaise

Sir Kensington’s Avocado Oil Mayonnaise is a great option. The ingredients include avocado oil, organic certified humane free range egg yolks, water, distilled vinegar, salt, lime juice concentrate, citric acid, lime oil.

I actually enjoy the flavor of this brand more than others I’ve tried. Still, I have to warn you that it doesn’t taste exactly like mayonnaise recipes that use soybean or canola oil. But a slight taste variance is completely worth ditching these bad oils from your diet.

When it comes to Sir Kensington’s, you have to specifically seek out the avocado oil type, as some other varieties still use sunflower oil and cane sugar.

 

Primal Kitchen Mayo

Primal Kitchen Mayonnaise is another best mayo option for keto. The ingredients in this brand include avocado oil, organic eggs, organic egg yolks, organic vinegar, sea salt, organic rosemary extract.

While I love the ingredients used in this avocado mayo, I don’t love the taste quite as much as Sir Kensington. Still, their website touts quite a few happy customers – so this could just be a taste preference on my part.

The company as a whole offers a very high quality product that’s readily available at health stores like Sprouts and Whole Foods.

 

That Wraps Up My Best Keto Mayo List

While there are several other keto-friendly brands on the market, including versions made with coconut oil, these are the only two brands I’ve tried and didn’t throw away after a quick taste test.

Yes, I know that’s wasteful … but I spent too many years shoving in diet food that I didn’t enjoy. Once I lost 100 pounds eating delicious foods I love, I vowed to never eat diet foods I hate ever again.

If you choose to venture outside of these recommendations with another keto mayo, then be sure to look at the ingredients label closely. Ditch any options with vegetable oils or vegetable oil blends, plus the versions that have added sugar or ingredients you can’t pronounce.

 

Mayonnaise Brands to Avoid

While there is a whole plethora of brands you should avoid, let’s talk about the top two worst brands that are still touted as keto-approved. Spoiler alert – they’re not!

 

Is Hellman’s Mayonnaise Keto Friendly?

In case you missed the aforementioned spoiler alert, bringing out the Hellman’s is not bringing out the best – at least when it comes to a ketogenic diet.

While technically some people can get into ketosis while keeping Hellman’s on their keto-approved list, that kind of list is typically best used with a lazy keto approach. (AKA, you don’t care what you eat, as long as it’s low in carbs).

The good news about lazy keto – you can lose some weight. The bad news about lazy keto – the weight lost is typically short-lived.

When asking, is Hellman’s Mayo keto, you have to look at the ingredients. These include soybean oil, water, whole eggs and egg yolks, distilled vinegar, salt, sugar, lemon juice concentrate, calcium disodium EDTA, and natural flavors.

If you’ve been paying attention, you see at least 2 HUGE keto red flags on that list: soybean oil and sugar.

So the answer is no. Hellman’s Mayonnaise ingredients tell you all you need to know when wondering if it’s OK to include this in your keto diet.

 

Duke’s Real Mayonnaise

When you add a word like REAL right into the title of your product, it has to be keto friendly, right? Isn’t that what keto is – a real food diet?

Au contraire mon frère. (That’s French for “I’m fancy like that” … or properly translated, it means quite the opposite).

Once again, Duke’s mayonnaise ingredients tell the true tale. Listed on the side of that jar you’ll find soybean oil, eggs, water, distilled and cider vinegar, salt, oleoresin paprika, natural flavors, and calcium disodium EDTA.

And once again, we don’t like soybean oil. When it’s listed as the first ingredient on the label, we really don’t like it because that signifies that it’s the most used ingredient in the product. 

So even though many eager keto dieters respond with this option when asking for the best keto mayo, this isn’t quite the keto friendly mayo everyone makes it out to be.

 

So What About the Taste?

If you grew up with regular mayonnaise as your only option, you might not enjoy even the best keto-friendly mayo brands right off the bat. Even though avocado oil is said to be a neutral oil, this version just doesn’t taste the same as the real mayonnaise your mom fed you as a kid.

One way to get used to the healthier versions of mayo is to just eat them. (I know, great advice coming from the girl who threw nearly every keto-friendly brand she tried away).

But that doesn’t mean it’s not true. The more often you eat something, the more quickly your palate adjusts to enjoy the new flavor. Since keeping inflammatory oils in your diet just because they taste better isn’t a good idea, sometimes you just have to suck it up and give your palate the chance to change.

Another less disciplinarian approach is to mix and match a healthy mayo with your other favorite keto friendly condiments.

 

Easy Keto Mayonnaise Recipes

I won’t pretend I make homemade mayonnaise from scratch – because I’ve tried a few times, and each attempt was a complete and utter failure. But I do mix low carb condiments with my favorite store bought keto mayo to come up with some pretty delicious sauces.

Here are a few examples of recipes you can taste test for yourself:

Easy Burger Sauce: this mayo ketchup recipe calls for 1/4 cup mayo, 1 tbsp sugar free ketchup, 1 tbsp pickle relish, and 1/8 tsp garlic powder. You can also use other spices like smoked paprika or red pepper flakes for a little bit of spice.

Just add everything into a small bowl and combine well. This recipe is enough for 2-4 burgers.

Dijon Mayo: Why worry about mustard vs mayo when you can have both? For this recipe, I combine 1/2 tbsp mayo with 1 tsp of Sprouts Honey Dijon Mustard. While you can use other honey dijon mustard you have on hand, Sprouts’ version is high in flavor and low in carbs.

I often use this recipe to dip rolled up lunch meat in. It’s so easy and so good!

While these are my favorite go-to recipes, you can also spice your mayo up with other low carb recipes like truffle aioli mayonnaise and garlic mayonnaise.

 

Mayonnaise FAQs

How many carbs in mayonnaise?

 

Make Keto Easy

While ditching foods with bad-for-you ingredients, like highly toxic vegetable oils, is a great start – why not learn ALL of the tips & tricks I used to lose 100 pounds with a low carb lifestyle I love?

Check out the Keto Quick Start Course to get the same info hundreds of other women used to finally quit yo-yo diets for good!

 

Best Keto Mayo

 

Related Articles:

How Much Fat Can You Eat on Keto?

Is Dark Chocolate Keto Friendly?

Is Sparkling Ice Keto Friendly?

 

Let's Connect!

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•