We Analyzed the Net Carbs in 3,266 Foods. Only 28% Fit a Keto Day

We run a net-carb food database, so we had a question we could actually answer with data: out of the everyday foods people look up, how many actually fit a low-carb day — and where do the hidden carbs hide?

So we analyzed the net carbs in 3,266 common foods — whole foods, packaged products, and restaurant items, all normalized to per-100-gram values from USDA and Open Food Facts data. Here is what the numbers say.

The headline: only 28% of foods fit a keto day

Of 3,266 foods analyzed, just 901 (28%) came in low enough in net carbs to fit comfortably in a keto day. Nearly 3 in 4 everyday foods (72%) did not. That single number explains why low-carb eating feels restrictive at first: most of the food landscape, by count, is carb-forward.

It gets starker when you look at the middle of the distribution:

A strict keto day targets roughly 20g of net carbs. The median food carries 17.9g in just 100 grams — often a third of a cup, or a few bites. In other words, the typical single food nearly maxes out a full day's carb budget in one small serving. That is the math behind why portion size matters so much on low-carb, and why "a little bit" of the wrong food isn't little at all.

The "eat freely" list is small — and it's mostly meat

Only 293 foods (9%) came in at 1g net carbs or less per 100g — the foods you can eat without really doing math. When we sorted that near-zero group by type, it was overwhelmingly animal protein:

This matches the lived experience of low-carb dieters: the truly "free" foods are meat, fish, eggs, and fat. Leafy greens are low-carb, but they don't show up as near-zero per 100g — you just eat them in volumes small enough that it never matters.

The most misleading foods: the "health halo" sugar bombs

The foods that surprise people most aren't candy — they know candy is sugar. It's the "natural," "wholesome," or "diet" foods that quietly rank among the highest net-carb items in the entire dataset:

By weight, honey and dried fruit are closer to pure sugar than to a "snack." A quarter-cup of raisins can carry more net carbs than a full strict-keto day allows. The lesson isn't that these foods are evil — it's that the front-of-package vibe ("natural," "fat-free," "made with real fruit") has nothing to do with the net-carb number.

Net carbs vs. total carbs: for whole foods, the gap is huge

Net carbs subtract fiber (and sugar alcohols) from total carbs, because fiber isn't digested into blood glucose. For fibrous whole foods, that subtraction is enormous — and it's why counting total carbs makes keto look harder than it is:

An avocado looks like an 8.5g "carb" food on a total-carb tracker and a 1.8g food on a net-carb one. Same avocado. This is the single biggest reason we built the database around net carbs: total carbs systematically penalize the exact whole foods a low-carb diet is built on.

Eating out is the hard mode: 89% of chain items don't fit

We isolated 460 restaurant and fast-food chain items in the dataset. The median was 20.9g net carbs, and only 11% qualified as keto-friendly. Put differently: order a typical item off a typical chain menu and there's roughly a 9-in-10 chance it doesn't fit a keto day as served — before you account for buns, breading, sauces, and sides. The keto-at-a-restaurant playbook (skip the bun, swap fries for a side salad, watch the sauce) exists because the default menu is stacked against you.

Why this matters

Three practical takeaways fall out of the data:

1. Count net carbs, not total carbs. For whole foods the difference is 50–90%, and total-carb counting will talk you out of foods (avocado, chia, flax, nuts) that are actually low-carb staples.
2. Distrust the health halo. "Natural" and "fat-free" are marketing, not macros. Dried fruit, honey, granola, and syrup are among the highest net-carb foods that exist.
3. Portion is the whole game. When the median food carries ~18g net carbs per 100g and a keto day is ~20g, the difference between "in ketosis" and "out" is often just how much, not what.

Methodology

We started from CarbMeNot's food database (3,442 items sourced from USDA FoodData Central and Open Food Facts, with net carbs computed as total carbohydrate minus fiber and sugar alcohols). For this analysis we kept only items reported on a per-100-gram basis, removed duplicates by name, and excluded records with implausible values (net or total carbs outside 0–100g per 100g), leaving 3,266 foods. "Keto-friendly" reflects each food's net carbs per 100g being low enough to fit a 20–50g daily budget at a normal serving. Aggregate statistics (median, mean, percentiles) are robust to individual data-entry noise; specific foods cited were spot-checked against source values. Nutrition data are estimates and this is general information, not medical or dietary advice — see our Medical Disclaimer.

Cite this study

CarbMeNot Net-Carb Food Study (2026). Analysis of 3,266 foods (USDA FoodData Central + Open Food Facts), normalized per 100g. Key findings: only 28% of foods are low enough in net carbs to fit a keto day; the median food contains 17.9g net carbs per 100g; 9% are near-zero (≤1g); and "natural" foods such as honey (82g), dried cranberries (77g), and raisins (72g) rank among the highest net-carb foods measured. Source: https://www.carbmenot.com/blog/net-carbs-3266-foods-study

Journalists, dietitians, and bloggers are welcome to cite these figures with a link. Want a specific cut of the data (a category, a chain, a food group) for a story? Email us at hello@carbmenot.com and we'll pull it. You can also explore the underlying numbers yourself in our free net-carb food database or check any single food with the Is It Keto? tool.