Keto in Belgium

You want to go keto, or get back to it after falling off, and on paper it is simple. In a house with young children it is anything but, because there are small people who need feeding every single day, who happily eat whatever is put in front of them, and who are getting plenty of carbohydrate at nursery or school regardless of what you do. The fear is that you will end up cooking two or three separate dinners every night, surrounded by biscuits and breadsticks, while trying not to nag a partner who is not sure they fancy it.

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Brussels in July and August is a different city from the rest of the year. The terrasses fill up, everyone is outside, the barbecues appear on apartment balconies and in parks, and the pace slows down enough that eating feels more social than mechanical. Most of this is fine for keto. Some of it is genuinely easy. One part of it is a problem. Barbecues The barbecue is one of the best social situations you can be in on keto.

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Belgian winter food is stews, braises, roasted meats, cheese, and things cooked for a long time in red wine or beer. Most of this is excellent for keto. The season does most of the work for you, in terms of aligning what you want to eat with what you’re supposed to eat. February is also grey and cold in a specific Brussels way: not dramatically cold, but persistently damp and dark in a way that makes you want to eat something heavy and sit near a radiator.

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The standard Belgian breakfast is tartines: bread with butter and jam, or butter and speculoos spread, or cheese. Maybe a boiled egg if someone is being ambitious. It’s perfectly nice and also entirely off-limits on keto, which means you need a different approach from day one. The good news is that the alternatives are straightforward and the ingredients are easy to find. The bad news is that you will eat a lot of eggs.

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Belgian hospitality is generous and it expresses itself primarily through food. If someone invites you to their home for dinner, there will be a lot of food, and refusing it will be noticed. If a colleague has a birthday, there will be cake in the office kitchen at 10am, and standing next to it with a coffee while not eating any will attract comments. If you go to a family dinner, there will be potatoes in some form, probably bread on the table, and possibly a waterzooi or a carbonnade flamande that you can eat around but not entirely avoid.

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