The June, 2007 issue of Consumers Report again disses low carb diets. They point out that the diets were not tested (Isn't that the whole point of Consumers Report? To actually test things?), but rated by a panel of nutritionists as to how they compare to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
As long as diet plans continue to be ranked based on the U.S. Guidelines, we will get bad advice and will likely continue to get fatter and sicker. Just look at the food pyramid; it has sugar at the top and sugar at the bottom. Sweets are placed at the point, which means eat just a little, BUT all that bread and pasta at the bottom is also sugar. (The latest version of the pyramid uses vertical stripes but depicts the same proportions.)
The only part of your body that can tell the difference between sugar and starch is your mouth. Starches are just chains of glucose molecules and glucose is sugar. Starches don’t trigger the sweet receptors on the tongue, but they are sugars all the same. Sugars provoke the release of insulin, the fat-storage hormone. Excess insulin leads to obesity, diabetes, and all the other health problems that have gotten worse in the last 30 years since our government first told us to cut out fat and it was replaced with sugar.
I recently returned from a trip to Europe and it was sad to see how easy it was to pick out the Americans at the airports. And those were just the ones who would fit on the planes! Perhaps that is part of the reason that so many people in other countries have such low opinions of us. They think we are lazy gluttons, when in reality we are the ones starving ourselves and working out till we drop.
Losing weight is not hard. Trans fats, toxins, pollutants, or other factors may have contributed to our epidemic of obesity and diabetes, but whatever the cause, insulin resistance is the result, and when you reduce your need for insulin by cutting down on carbohydrates, the problem is solved.
Many people reject low-carb diets based on hearsay. If you actually read a book, like Protein Power or The New Diet Revolution, you will discover that the system is based on sound science and its nutrition is the best match for human metabolism. Try it yourself and you will be convinced. Have a checkup with medical tests done before you start and again after six months on the diet. All your risk factors for disease go down, your blood lipid profile improves, your blood pressure normalizes, and, contrary to popular opinion, you will find that you are eating two or three times as many vegetables and fruits as the average American.
The last argument we always hear is that nobody likes a low-carb diet and it’s too hard to stick to. Not so. My husband and I have been doing it for almost eight years now and although we had to make some changes, I honestly think we eat better now than we did before.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Sweeteners
I received a question about the characteristics of Splenda®, how it works in cooking, and why I use it in some of my recipes. In Carb Wars, I devoted several pages to the different kinds of sugar substitutes and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Since the subject may be of general interest, I will attempt to address it here.
Splenda has been used for 20 plus years in some countries and doesn't seem to have any harmful effects, at least not yet. It adds a few chlorine molecules to the diet, but we've been drinking chlorinated water for a long time and most people seem to be willing to accept that.
In writing a cookbook, you have to use products that are readily available and reasonably inexpensive. There may be better options out there, ones that are made with soluble fibers, for example, but they are still very expensive and only available by mail order. I have about 20 different sweeteners sitting on my kitchen counter right now that I plan to start testing, but that’s another book. The fact is that until people become convinced that sugar and not fat is the problem, the manufacturers have little motivation to do the research and development for good substitutes. I hope we can change that.
About Splenda: Splenda is the brand name for sucralose. It is a sweetener that is made from sugar (sucrose) by altering it so that it is not broken down by our digestive enzymes. Sugar is converted into sucralose by substituting three chlorine atoms for three hydroxyl groups on the sugar molecule.
Is it a natural product? Not really, but it has been used for many years in Canada and some other countries. It was approved for sale in US in 1998 and is not required to carry any warning labels. It is even considered safe for nursing mothers and pregnant women. It comes in two forms, one in yellow packets for tea or coffee, and one in granular form that is fluffed up with bulking agents so it can be substituted, measure for measure, for sugar. It can be used for cooking like regular sugar since it holds up to heat, but the volume is much smaller since sucrolose is 600 times as sweet as sugar. It takes some work to make foods made with Splenda taste as good as those made with sugar, especially the plain ones like pastry cream and vanilla ice cream.
I solved the problem in my recipes by adding a small amount of another sweeteners to those recipes. When you have a blend, the disadvantages of one will counteract the disadvantages of the other. (That's why so many soft drinks contain a combination of Ace K and Splenda.) As for the baking problems, Splenda has so little volume that it has no effect on baked goods. It is 600 times as sweet as regular sugar. The problem is that it does not contribute the other qualities of sugar, like bulking, browning, caramelizing, retaining moisture, and so on. You have to compensate for that by adding other things that do have those properties.
The makers of Splenda suggest using powdered milk to add bulk and promote browning. I use whey protein powder instead to eliminate the lactose (milk sugar) in the powdered milk. Another useful product is Not/Sugar. One tablespoon of Not/Sugar per cup of sugar replaced in a recipe will improve the texture of cakes and cookies. I have also had success using Splenda in combination with polydextrose, which is glucose, but in such long chains that our digestive enzymes won’t break it down. It adds bulk, and it browns and caramelizes like ordinary sugar, but the body treats it like soluble fiber.
Polydextrose preferentially feeds the “good” bacteria in the digestive tract so it is actually beneficial. It is only slightly sweet, so you must also use a high intensity sweetener with it. There is one called Poly D Plus that has sucralose already in it. It has the advantage that it doesn’t require any other bulking agent so you can avoid the sugar added to Splenda® and some of the other sugar substitutes to add volume.So the bottom line is, I recommend Splenda for cooking until something better comes along. I will continue to test other options and let you know when I have more to report.
Splenda has been used for 20 plus years in some countries and doesn't seem to have any harmful effects, at least not yet. It adds a few chlorine molecules to the diet, but we've been drinking chlorinated water for a long time and most people seem to be willing to accept that.
In writing a cookbook, you have to use products that are readily available and reasonably inexpensive. There may be better options out there, ones that are made with soluble fibers, for example, but they are still very expensive and only available by mail order. I have about 20 different sweeteners sitting on my kitchen counter right now that I plan to start testing, but that’s another book. The fact is that until people become convinced that sugar and not fat is the problem, the manufacturers have little motivation to do the research and development for good substitutes. I hope we can change that.
About Splenda: Splenda is the brand name for sucralose. It is a sweetener that is made from sugar (sucrose) by altering it so that it is not broken down by our digestive enzymes. Sugar is converted into sucralose by substituting three chlorine atoms for three hydroxyl groups on the sugar molecule.
Is it a natural product? Not really, but it has been used for many years in Canada and some other countries. It was approved for sale in US in 1998 and is not required to carry any warning labels. It is even considered safe for nursing mothers and pregnant women. It comes in two forms, one in yellow packets for tea or coffee, and one in granular form that is fluffed up with bulking agents so it can be substituted, measure for measure, for sugar. It can be used for cooking like regular sugar since it holds up to heat, but the volume is much smaller since sucrolose is 600 times as sweet as sugar. It takes some work to make foods made with Splenda taste as good as those made with sugar, especially the plain ones like pastry cream and vanilla ice cream.
I solved the problem in my recipes by adding a small amount of another sweeteners to those recipes. When you have a blend, the disadvantages of one will counteract the disadvantages of the other. (That's why so many soft drinks contain a combination of Ace K and Splenda.) As for the baking problems, Splenda has so little volume that it has no effect on baked goods. It is 600 times as sweet as regular sugar. The problem is that it does not contribute the other qualities of sugar, like bulking, browning, caramelizing, retaining moisture, and so on. You have to compensate for that by adding other things that do have those properties.
The makers of Splenda suggest using powdered milk to add bulk and promote browning. I use whey protein powder instead to eliminate the lactose (milk sugar) in the powdered milk. Another useful product is Not/Sugar. One tablespoon of Not/Sugar per cup of sugar replaced in a recipe will improve the texture of cakes and cookies. I have also had success using Splenda in combination with polydextrose, which is glucose, but in such long chains that our digestive enzymes won’t break it down. It adds bulk, and it browns and caramelizes like ordinary sugar, but the body treats it like soluble fiber.
Polydextrose preferentially feeds the “good” bacteria in the digestive tract so it is actually beneficial. It is only slightly sweet, so you must also use a high intensity sweetener with it. There is one called Poly D Plus that has sucralose already in it. It has the advantage that it doesn’t require any other bulking agent so you can avoid the sugar added to Splenda® and some of the other sugar substitutes to add volume.So the bottom line is, I recommend Splenda for cooking until something better comes along. I will continue to test other options and let you know when I have more to report.
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