The UK Supermarket Keto Shopping List I Actually Use

Most keto shopping lists online are American. Great — except we don’t have Trader Joe’s, our bacon is different, and half the recommended products don’t exist here. So this is the list I actually shop from, in supermarkets we actually have.

A quick note on how I count: I use net carbs (total carbohydrate as listed on UK labels — UK labels already exclude fibre from the carbohydrate figure, unlike American ones, which makes life easier).

The staples (any supermarket)

• Eggs — the backbone of keto breakfast. Roughly 0.5g carbs each.
• Butter and double cream — double cream is a UK keto superpower: ~1.6g carbs per 100ml.
• Full-fat Greek yoghurt — check labels; the good ones are around 4–5g per 100g. Avoid “Greek-style” with added starch.
• Mature cheddar, halloumi, mozzarella — near-zero carbs. Halloumi fried in butter is a lunch, not an ingredient.
• Chicken thighs, mince, sausages (high meat content) — for sausages, look for 90%+ meat; cheaper ones pad with rusk, which is carbs. And leave the skin on the chicken — it’s amazing, and on keto it’s not the enemy.
• Burrata (or mini burratas), cherry tomatoes and olive oil — the staple people don’t think of. Together they’re an instant meal that feels like a restaurant ordered it; separately they upgrade everything else in this list.
• Steak, lamb and fish — whatever cuts are on offer that week. Keeping a rotation of these in the fridge is most of the battle: if there’s always a protein ready to cook, the snack loop never gets its opening.
• Vegetables — almost all of them — the exceptions are the starchy ones: potatoes, corn, parsnips, sweet potato. Everything green, plus peppers, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, cauliflower, is fair game.
• Frozen greens — spinach, broccoli, green beans. Cheap and no guilt when you forget them.

A word on olive oil, because I buy it like I’m afraid of a shortage: fat is your friend on keto. This is the part newcomers find hardest to believe, but if you cut carbs and skimp on fat, you end up so hungry — and hungry is how every diet dies. Good olive oil over everything, butter in the pan, skin on the chicken. That’s what makes this way of eating hold.

Aldi and Lidl wins

Budget supermarkets are quietly brilliant for keto because whole foods are their thing:

• Aldi’s protein range and their nut selection are some of the cheapest per kilo in the UK.
• Lidl’s Greek yoghurt (the full-fat one in the big tub) is consistently good value.
• Both do decent smoked salmon and deli meats for a fraction of the big-four price.

Reading UK labels: the 30-second version

1. Look at “of which sugars” and total carbohydrate — sugar-free doesn’t mean carb-free.
2. Ignore front-of-pack traffic lights for fat — keto inverts those assumptions; make your own call.
3. Watch for maltitol in “low sugar” sweets — it’s technically not sugar but many people find it spikes them (and it has… digestive consequences).

A few things I order online instead

Some keto-specific products are cheaper or only available online. These are the ones I genuinely reorder:

• Diablo sugar-free treats — my all-time favourite treat brand in the UK, and the thing I buy from Amazon most often. Biscuits, wafers, chocolate — all no added sugar. That link goes to their whole range. One honest note: check the sweetener on each product — some use stevia, some use maltitol, and if maltitol doesn’t agree with you (see above), pick accordingly. I clearly keep coming back anyway.

• Ground almonds / almond flour in bulk — supermarket bags are tiny and pricey; buying 1kg+ online roughly halves the per-gram cost. It’s the base for most keto baking.

• Erythritol sweetener — my default sugar replacement for baking; unlike maltitol it doesn’t spike most people. (I’ve written a full honest guide to keto sweeteners — stevia, erythritol, monk fruit and the rest.)

(Those are affiliate links — how that works.)

When you’re absolutely dying for some fruit

Most fruit is too sugary for keto, but here’s my exception and my favourite dessert: strawberries with double cream, a little stevia or erythritol, and a dusting of cinnamon. Strawberries are among the lowest-carb fruits, double cream is a keto freebie, and cinnamon is supposed to help with insulin response — I can’t promise you the science, but I feel like it helps, and it makes the whole thing taste like a proper pudding rather than a consolation prize.

What I skip

• “Keto” branded bars and snacks as a habit — fine occasionally, but they’re expensive and it’s easy to graze your way out of ketosis on them.
• Low-carb bread substitutes until you’ve read the label — some are genuinely good, some are 15g of carbs pretending otherwise.

That’s the list. Nothing exotic, nothing you need a specialist shop for — which is rather the point. If you’ve found a UK supermarket gem I’ve missed, I want to know about it.