Also, you might hear that the Ketogenic diet is "unhealthy" for children. Well, it isn't exactly "healthy," but it is far healthier with fewer side effects than ANY seizure medication out there. The good news is that many kids are able to significantly reduce or even eliminate seizure meds when on the diet. Some kids are able to become seizure free and medication free, and eventually (after 2 or 3 years) wean from the diet. So...it isn't necessarily a lifetime of unhealthy eating.
The two biggest health issues with keto kids is high cholesterol levels and slowing down of growth. Johns Hopkins did a study a couple years ago, and found that even though cholesterol levels do go up, they return to normal when children go off the diet, and long range tracking of keto kids hasn't revealed long term health issues in adulthood.
In our personal experience, after one year of being on the keto diet, Jon's overall cholesterol levels was 165, his HDL was 47, and his LDL was 104. These are all within healthy limits. So...the diet did not cause cholesterol problems. However, this might be because many keto kids get most of their fats from dairy -- cream, butter, and cheese. In our case, about 70% of Jon's fats come from vegetable fats -- canola and olive oil, nuts, olives, and avocado. We also squeeze as many veggies in there as possible. So...it seems that it may not be the high fat that causes the high cholesterol, but perhaps the high amount of animal fat and lack of vegetables.
The other issue is growth -- many keto kids slow down in growth. We did not experience this in the first year that Jon was on the diet -- he gain height and weight as evenly as he did prior to initiating. However, in the past 6 months, we have been seeing a bit of a flatline -- but that may be due to hypothyrodism just diagnosed.
The classic ketogenic diet has a ratio of 4 grams of fat for every 1 gram of protein OR carbohydrate. The protein and carbs are supposed to be balanced. But a lot of parents tend to make meals that are higher in carbs and lower in protein, and I think that the lack of protein is probably contributing to the slowing in growth.