Can You Eat Sour Cream on a Low-Carb Keto Diet?

Sour cream is a thick, tangy topping that appears in many recipes. You can eat some types of sour cream on a keto diet.

Sour cream is a thick, tangy topping that appears in many recipes. For example, people often use sour cream on baked potatoes, cakes, parfaits, and other foods. If you’re following a low-carbohydrate ketogenic — or keto — diet, you may wonder if eating sour cream is okay. The answer depends on the number of carbs in sour cream. While some types of sour cream are keto-friendly, others have too many carbohydrates. Learn how you can tell the difference when choosing sour cream. 

Learning the basic principles of the keto diet can make it easier for you to determine if sour cream and other foods are keto-friendly. 

The keto diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate approach. Using this eating plan, dieters get 70% to 80% of their daily calorie intake from fat, 10% to 20% from protein, and 5% to 10% from carbohydrates. 

The diet severely restricts carbohydrate consumption to 20 to 50 grams daily. To put this into perspective, a single large banana contains 31 grams of carbohydrates, which exceeds the limit for many keto followers. 

The keto diet causes weight loss by changing the body’s metabolic functions. When you deprive your body of carbohydrates, it burns glycogen stores for energy. After exhausting these fuel sources, the body switches to a biological process called ketogenesis. This process creates ketone bodies that the body converts into energy.

You can eat some types of sour cream on a keto diet. Like all foods, sour cream must contain low carbohydrates and high fat to be considered keto-friendly. 

Sour cream is a smooth, pleasant-tasting dairy product made from lactic acid bacteria and pasteurized milk. It comes in several varieties, including: 

• Regular sour cream: This type must contain at least 18% fat. 
• Reduced-fat sour cream: This variety has 25% less fat than the regular version. The total amount of fat can’t exceed 13.5%.
• Light or lite sour cream: This product contains 50% less fat than regular sour cream, with a fat content totaling no more than 9%. 
• Low-fat sour cream: This type must have 6% or less fat. 
• Nonfat sour cream: The fat content in this sour cream can’t exceed 1%. 

The amount of fat in sour cream is related to its carbohydrate content. Here’s a quick breakdown of the macronutrient content for 100-gram portions of three popular varieties of sour cream: 

Because fat-free and lite sour creams have high carbohydrate content, they’re not suitable for a keto diet. 

Fat-free sour cream contains the highest amount of carbohydrates at 10 grams per serving. Since keto dieters can typically eat 20 to 50 grams of carbohydrates daily, a serving of this food would take up 20% to 50% of their carbohydrate allowance. 

Similarly, a lite sour cream with 6.67 grams of carbohydrates would make up 13% to 33% of a dieter’s daily carbohydrate intake. 

A serving of regular sour cream only contains 3.33 grams of carbohydrates. A keto dieter could easily fit this food into their daily intake and have plenty of room for other low-carb foods. If you’re following the keto diet, you can eat regular sour cream as long as you monitor your carbohydrate intake from other sources. 

Regular sour cream contains several other nutrients that can make it a healthy addition to a keto diet. For example, a 100-gram serving of this food provides: 

• Calcium: 67 milligrams
• Sodium: 50 milligrams
• Vitamin A: 667 IU
• Cholesterol: 67 milligrams 

This food contains a small amount of calcium. The recommended daily allowance for calcium is 1,000 milligrams for men and women aged 19 to 50. A serving of regular sour cream provides around 7% of this requirement. Calcium is an essential mineral that forms tissue, strengthens bones and teeth, and aids circulatory function. 

Sour cream also provides 667 IU, or around 200 micrograms, of vitamin A. Men aged 19 to 50 should eat 900 micrograms of this vitamin daily, and women should eat 700 micrograms. Sour cream provides around 22% of this requirement for men and  29% for women, making it a great source of vitamin A. This vitamin aids immune function, cell growth, vision, and other essential functions. 

However, foods with high dietary cholesterol like regular sour cream can cause health issues. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025, state that people should eat a diet low in dietary cholesterol. High cholesterol is associated with conditions like cardiovascular disease and obesity.  

Eating regular sour cream in moderate amounts is best to avoid adding too much cholesterol to your diet. 

Sour cream is a popular food that’s often added to carbohydrate-heavy dishes. For example, many people use sour cream as a topping for baked potatoes, but potatoes are filled with starchy carbohydrates. One baked russet potato contains 37 grams of carbohydrates, making it unsuitable for a keto diet. 

If you want to eat sour cream on a keto diet, you can include it in keto-friendly dishes like: 

• Keto sour cream bread 
• Keto sour cream chicken enchiladas 
• Keto sour cream pound cake
• Low-carb sour cream biscuits 
• Sour cream and onion cauliflower bake 
• Sour cream and onion keto chips 

When choosing keto recipes with sour cream, always review the ingredients carefully to ensure that the recipe doesn’t include high-carbohydrate foods. 

Research shows that a keto diet with low-carbohydrate foods provides many potential health benefits. For example, this method may: 

• Aid weight loss
• Decrease appetite 
• Enhance lipid profiles 
• Reduce inflammation
• Supplement cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation 

However, the keto diet can cause adverse reactions like kidney stones and vitamin deficiencies. People may also struggle to sustain a keto diet over the long term due to its strict dietary restrictions. 

It’s a good idea to talk to your health care provider before beginning the keto diet. If you decide that this diet is the right fit, carefully review food labels for sour cream and other products to make sure you choose low-carbohydrate, keto-friendly foods.