Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese Review

Avatar for TNI Editorial Team
Written by Tim Kalantjakos
SHARE

This post contains links through which we may earn a small commission should you make a purchase from a brand. This in no way affects our ability to objectively critique the products and brands we review.

dr jennifer hughes

Dr. Jennifer Hughes, MD
Medical Reviewer

Evidence Based Research To fulfill our commitment to bringing our audience accurate and insightful content, our expert writers and medical reviewers rely on carefully curated research.
Read Our Editorial Policy

Our Rating: A

Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese earns an A from our review team for excellent ingredients, taste, and more. 

We determined this rating by evaluating the following factors:

  • Ingredients and Nutrition Quality
    i
    Ingredients and Nutrition QualityA
    Natural ingredients, a refreshing (though not complete) lack of additives, and a protein-packed wheat flour substitute earn Perfect Keto an A for ingredient and nutrition quality.
A
  • User Experience
    i
    User ExperienceA
    The noodles themselves may be an acquired taste for some, but the cheese sauce was delicious, and our review team had no shipping, packaging, or other issues related to our Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese orders.
A
  • Brand Experience
    i
    Brand ExperienceA
    Save for a limited customer service department, Perfect Keto checks all the boxes when it comes to accommodating and supporting their customers with fair policies, an informative website, and more.
A
  • Value
    i
    ValueA-
    Compare the price to run-of-the-mill mac and cheese, and Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese does not do well at all, but partially offsetting the premium is the superior ingredient list and a keto-approved amount of carbs.
A-
Our Editorial Policy

Get 20% off with code:

Welcome to our Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese review!

Whether or not it’s easy, being cheesy is certainly not a foreign concept to our keto friends, to whom Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese says, “I see you.”

Using lupin (bean) flour and a much cleaner set of ingredients than most competitors, Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese is a low-carb, high-protein, gluten-free option for those looking to stay in ketosis or simply throw down on some noodles without causing the Mount Fuji of blood sugar spikes.

All cheese-based humor aside, our review team found Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese to be as delicious as it is nutritionally impressive, and Perfect Keto backs this product up with a pro-consumer return policy, website, and more.
We’d love to see a bit of relaxation on price and (on a more general note) a bit of beefing up on the customer support, but otherwise, Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese impresses, earning an A from our review team.

Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese
Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese
  • Description

    The noodles take a spoonful or two to get used to, but the luscious and savory cheese sauce of Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese quickly won our review team over.

Ingredients and Nutrition Quality

Summary:

Grade: A

Natural ingredients, a refreshing (though not complete) lack of additives, and a protein-packed wheat flour substitute earn Perfect Keto an A for ingredient and nutrition quality.

Here is the ingredient list for Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese:

Macaroni: Lupin Flour, Water, Sunflower Flour, Soluble Tapioca Fiber, Xanthan Gum. Cheese Seasoning: Dehydrated Cheddar Cheese (Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes), Milk Solids, Butter (Cream, Salt), Salt, Natural Flavors, Milkfat, Non-fat Dry Milk, Annatto Extract (For Color), Paprika Extract (For Color), Yeast Extract. 

There’s a lot going on—and not going on—here, and it will be easier to assess the nutritional value and ingredient quality in this case by comparing to a highly popular brand of “regular” mac and cheese like Kraft.

Let’s break it down into categories:

Noodles: Kraft uses enriched macaroni (wheat flour, durum flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid) for their noodles, as do many other brands of mac and cheese.

On the other hand, Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese uses lupin (bean) flour, water, sunflower flour, tapioca flour, and xanthan gum. 

Unlike “enriched” macaroni, which only needs to be enriched (i.e., have nutrients added back in) because it is so heavily processed, the less adulterated lupin bean macaroni of Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese delivers a fiber-rich shot of nutrients proven to exert cardioprotective, antioxidant, and other desirable effects

Sauce: Kraft uses whey, milkfat, salt, milk protein concentrate, sodium triphosphate, sodium phosphate, and several other ingredients to make their cheese sauce. 

Perfect Keto uses—if you’d believe it—actual cheddar cheese, milk, butter, and salt (also not exhaustive, but covers the major constituents). In addition to simply having better ingredients, Perfect Keto widens the quality gap further by staying away from harmful preservatives like sodium phosphate, which has been linked to serious and even fatal kidney damage

Everything Else: Both Kraft and Perfect Keto use annatto and paprika extracts for color (both are safe choices), but Kraft adds calcium phosphate, which is often used as an anticaking or leavening agent. This mineral plays a key role in bone development and maintenance, but too much can have deleterious effects like hypercalcemia, nausea, kidney stones, and more.

In all three camps, Perfect Keto roundly outperforms Kraft, modeling what a “clean” (or at least cleaner) mac and cheese product can look like. 

The noodles are less processed and naturally nutrient-dense, the sauce is real cheese with other natural ingredients, and the “everything else,” i.e., preservatives and additives, are kept to a minimum.

Also of note is the whopping 24 grams of protein per serving in Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese, which dwarfs not only Kraft, but every competitor we checked out, all while remaining at 7 grams of carbs per serving.  

As such, we give Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese an A for ingredients and nutritional quality.

User Experience

Summary:

Grade: A

The noodles themselves may be an acquired taste for some, but the cheese sauce was delicious, and our review team had no shipping, packaging, or other issues related to our Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese orders.

It was never far from our minds throughout the testing process that Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese is among a very small selection of cleaner, keto-friendly mac and cheese products.

As such, we’ll comment on taste and texture both from a broad (all mac and cheese) and narrow (only keto-friendly mac) perspective.

Our testers agreed that the cheese sauce was excellent; it didn’t taste “intentionally healthy” at all, which makes sense considering the keto diet’s emphasis on cheese, butter, and other high-fat, low-carb foods. 

The noodles were definitely the greatest discrepancy from the majority of wheat-flour-based mac and cheese products, because they were significantly chewier and less neutral as far as taste goes.

Most will easily be able to tell that the noodles are made from a bean (it’s technically a seed, but is still called lupin bean), and we can see pickier/younger palates possibly taking issue with the taste.

In the context of all mac and cheese products, regardless of nutritional angle, Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese was still very tasty (mostly carried by the sauce), though not the best we’ve had.

Compared to the very slim selection of keto-friendly mac and cheese products on the market, Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese definitely makes a bid for the top spot in terms of taste and texture.

As for the rest of our experience—ordering, shipping times and packaging quality, etc.—we had no significant issues affecting our use of the product.

The box label conveniently displays per-serving carb (7g) and protein (24g) values, and everything in our shipment arrived intact and on time.

Considering what Perfect Keto has achieved in the taste and texture department with very little nutritional compromise, we’re giving their mac and cheese an A for user experience.

Brand Experience

Summary:

Grade: A

Save for a limited customer service department, Perfect Keto checks all the boxes when it comes to accommodating and supporting their customers with fair policies, an informative website, and more.

No matter how great a product is, if you have to deal with a poor website or customer service experience, inflexible return policies, and other hassles just to get it, your overall experience is going to suffer significantly.

This is why we always factor in brand experience with our product reviews, which encompasses the above factors and others that can make or break your impression of a product.

We had no reason to contact Perfect Keto customer support in our review of their mac and cheese, as everything arrived on time and without issue, but in our Perfect Keto Brand Review, we put their capabilities to the test.

They received a ding for only offering email support, but their extremely quick response time (less than five minutes) and highly in-depth, accommodating answer were definitely worthy of a top score in their own right.

The shipping window is listed as 3-7 business days, which is neither impressive nor problematic, but the free shipping cutoff of $60 (spent in a single purchase) definitely sweetens the pot.

The return policy is quite generous, as Perfect Keto allows for a 30-day window to return any product, opened or not.

Shopping the Perfect Keto website is fairly easy, thanks to category links accessible from the main navigation bar as well as several filters that hang out in the “shop all” section.

perfect keto website

We weren’t inundated with unnecessary up-sell pages or pop-up ads while shopping, and as far as general content goes, the Perfect Keto blog covers a nice spread of beginner-friendly and more technical topics.

Other than the constraint of email-only customer support, it was all aces, so Perfect Keto earns an A for brand experience. 

Value

Summary:

Grade: A-

Compare the price to run-of-the-mill mac and cheese, and Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese does not do well at all, but partially offsetting the premium is the superior ingredient list and a keto-approved amount of carbs.

A three-pack of Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese (18 ounces total) costs $20.99, which reduces to roughly $1.16 an ounce. 

At the other end of the price range for Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese, if you sign up for the Perfect Keto subscription program and order the 12-pack, you’ll pay $56.79, reducing to just under $0.79 an ounce.

As mentioned, there are very few competitors offering a clean, gluten-free, keto-friendly mac and cheese that comes even close to 24 grams of protein per serving, but the closest imitations are still at or over the $1.20/ounce mark.

Yes, Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese will cost you significantly more than those highly processed wheat-flour noodles shaped into Spongebob Squarepants and friends, but spending the extra cheddar keeps you clear of harmful preservatives, dyes, and other additives.

Again, we find ourselves weighing a downside (the premium price) against the fact that Perfect Keto has stepped up to serve an almost completely ignored cross-section of the keto-friendly and/or gluten-free audiences, arriving at an A- for value when these factors are balanced out.

FAQ

Can I have Kraft Mac and Cheese on keto?

One cup of Kraft Original Mac and Cheese provides 50 grams of carbs, so that is a whopping no. 

Can you eat macaroni on keto?

In the vast majority of cases, traditional (wheat-based) noodles are going to provide far too many carbs for keto compliance, but lupin bean noodles are much lower in carbs.

Is cheese OK with keto?

The high-fat, moderate protein, and low-carb content of cheese makes it an ideal food for keto in most cases (there are some low-fat, high-carb cheeses).

How does Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese taste?

Our review team found the cheese sauce to be consistent with the best mac and cheese dishes we’ve tried, but the slightly bitter lupin bean noodles are a bit of an acquired taste.

Is Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese good for you?

In the sense that it’s a cure-all superfood, no. In the sense that it is much lower in carbs, preservatives, and processed ingredients than other competitors while adding more nutritional value, yes.

Our Verdict

It would have been all too easy for Perfect Keto to set up their keto mac and cheese—as they actually did—at their Expo West booth as a simple gimmick to reel passersby in, but this product absolutely defends itself nutritionally.

The cleaner ingredient list, much higher protein content, and gluten-free-ness of this mac and cheese earns the first purchase, and the satisfying (but still different) taste makes it easy to justify as a more regular meal.

Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese isn’t going to break any records in the price department, but if you’re actively looking for gluten-free, keto, and/or cleaner mac, we honestly aren’t seeing anyone come close at the moment.

It’s an overall grade of A from our review team for Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese, and we invite anyone inclined in the direction of sultry, savory cheddar to give this mac a try. 

Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese
Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese
  • Description

    The noodles take a spoonful or two to get used to, but the luscious and savory cheese sauce of Perfect Keto Mac and Cheese quickly won our review team over.



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *