Keto Foods

Is Cassava Flour Keto or Too High in Carbs?

By Bree

Last updated on September 6, 2022

There is a growing amount of evidence that refined baking flours like all-purpose flour may carry potential health risks due to causing inflammation within the body in certain people. Fortunately for individuals on the keto diet, it’s quite easy to replace refined flour with all-natural flour options that are low carb and quite nutrient-dense. Today, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at cassava flour, a culinary flour that has been seeing a rise in popularity over the last few years. Is cassava flour keto? Let’s find out.

What Makes Cassava Flour Such a Popular Choice for Low Carb Diets?

Before we really dive in and start to take a look at whether or not cassava flour can truly be considered keto-friendly, let’s first take a look at some of the main reasons why it’s been growing so much in popularity:

Cassava flour is both a grain-free and gluten-free culinary flour option.
Cassava flour contains less calories than all-purpose flour, making it an attractive baking flour for individuals who are focused on losing weight.
Cassava flour may offer up certain benefits for your immune system thanks to its vitamin C content.

Is Cassava Flour Keto?

Unfortunately, cassava flour is definitely not a keto-friendly flour.

Right off the bat, it simply contains far too many carbohydrates to ever be able to work with keto diet macros, even keto dieters who are rather flexible and can manage up to 60 grams of daily carbs will struggle to make cassava flour work with their macros.

On top of that, cassava flour offers up next to nothing in the way of dietary fat, protein, or fiber. This is especially noticeable when you compare it with other popular keto flour options like almond flour and coconut flour that are rich sources of all 3 of the aforementioned nutrients.

That also doesn’t even begin to get into the fact that cassava flour is also a source of dietary antinutrients. Worse yet, there is a very real risk that improperly prepared cassava flour may contain chemicals that your body converts into cyanide, which can lead to potential poisoning, paralysis, or even death. (1)

All things considered, the risks associated with cassava flour far outweigh any potential benefits, and so for that reason, along with its obviously high carb content, we most definitely can not recommend cassava flour for keto dieters.

Cassava Flour Nutrition Facts

Here is the approximate nutritional breakdown for a one cup serving size of cassava flour:

165 calories
0.3 grams dietary fat
1.4 grams protein
39 grams carbs
2 grams dietary fiber
2 grams sugar
0 mg cholesterol
14.4 mg sodium
271 mg potassium

Keto Cassava Flour Substitutes

Since cassava flour is unfortunately not viable for the keto diet, we thought it would be helpful to share our top 5 picks for culinary flours that are 100% keto approved: