WHAT'S REALLY IN THAT PACKAGE?

I received a question a while back about one of the ingredients I used in Carb Wars from a man whose wife has gestational diabetes. He said the net carb count of 48 grams that I gave for oat flour was different from the count given on the Bob’s Red Mill website.

I happened to have a package of Bob’s Red Mill oat flour in my cupboard, so I checked the label. It says 16 grams of carbohydrate and 3 grams of fiber in 1/3 cup (27 grams), so a cup would have 39 net grams, which is actually lower than what I reported in the book. The Bob’s Red Mill website now gives the count as 66 net grams, so they have obviously recalculated it.

This has happened to me before and it can be a real problem when you must keep your carbs very low. Coconut flour used to be listed as being about 2 net grams per serving and now some brands say it has three times that many. Why do counts change? Perhaps the company has switched to a new database. Samples vary and the databases are all different. Or they may have been cited for having the numbers wrong and been required to correct them. Andrew DiMino has an interesting article on the CarbSmart website: http://www.carbsmart.com/carbcounts1.html. He explained that many things can affect the nutrition counts, including time, temperature, humidity, shipping method, etc., in addition to the fact that samples from different years or different locations will naturally differ from one another. He also said that some venders lie.

Anyone who regularly checks his/her blood sugar can get some idea of what is really in a product, but according to diabetes expert, Dr. Richard Bernstein, even that can change from day to day and hour to hour depending on many factors.

Oat flour still has an advantage over wheat flour; it is at least somewhat lower in carbs, it has fewer anti-nutrients than wheat, and it has 2 to 3 times more soluble fiber. However, the lowest net-carb grain I've found is Sustagrain barley. I posted about it with the numbers and sources here: http://carbwars.blogspot.com/search?q=sustagrain. It has much more fiber than oats. It is available as flour or flakes from The King Arthur Flour Company.

Some other possibilities for low-carb baking:

-Atkins has brought back their low-carb bake mix.

-Carbalose flour and CarbQuik, by Tova Industries, can be ordered from www.netrition.com and most online low-carb stores.

-Bob's Red Mill's sells a low-carb flour mix from their website.

-You can also use a mixture of gluten flour, almond flour, and whey protein powder as a flour replacement. Jennifer Eloff has a recipe for many flour subs and some excellent recipes using them in her books and on her blog at: www.low-carb-news-.blogspot.com. She also has posted some recipes using a combination of her bake mix and Carbalose flour that look good.

The bottom line is that we need to keep our consumption of carb-containing foods low, low, low, especially those who are diabetic, because it is impossible to know for sure exactly what's in there. And, although we all like starches and grains, there is absolutely no biological need to eat any of them.

© 2010, Judy Barnes Baker
Carb Wars; Sugar is the New Fat

GREEN TOMATOES

If you've ever tasted ripe tomatoes fresh from the vine, still warm from the sun and sweet enough to eat out of hand, you will understand why my husband keeps trying to grow them—not an easy thing to do where we live. This year, he found a variety bred specifically for Oregon and Washington. He started the seeds inside on a heated pad to give them a head start and then potted them up and put them out on our back deck, the only place that gets full-day sun. We put water-filled, red plastic surrounds over the seedlings so we could put them outside while the nights were still cool. The water was supposed to absorb the sun during the day and keep the plants warm overnight to fool them into thinking they were in Texas or Florida. It probably helped, but unfortunately, we had the coldest Spring on record; it was May 14 before the temperature reached 70 degrees. Our plants survived but didn't grow much until July and didn't bloom until late in August. Finally, now in mid September, we have green tomatoes, but we are already back into Fall mode with highs in the 60's and our prospects for ripe, home-grown tomatoes are fading fast. However, there is an upside to this story.

An article by Lynne Rossetto Kasper about green tomatoes made a timely appearance in her column, "Ask the Splendid Table." (The Seattle Times, Sept. 15, 2010.) She says, "anything you can do with a tart apple, you can do with a green tomato." Bing! The light bulb came on. I know you can make desserts with tomatoes, but it hadn't occurred to me that when they are still crunchy and tart they could sub for apples in condiments, chutneys, jams, and pies. I quickly looked up the nutrition data for green tomatoes. Although they are a little higher than ripe tomatoes, they are a LOT lower than apples.

Below is my version of Lynne's recipe for Rustic Italian Green-Tomato Jam. Check back after I've had time to experiment a bit more. This is going to be fun.

Note: 100 grams of raw, green tomatoes has 5.1 grams of carbs and 1.1 of fiber for a net of 4 grams. (More than a red tomato by 1.28 net grams.) The same weight of apples has 13.81 grams of carbs and 2.4 of fiber for a net of 11.41 grams, so the green tomato has a significant advantage as a replacement for apples.

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GREEN TOMATO JAM
I used a granular sweetener called Just Like Sugar, which is made of oligofructose and orange peel. I'll try it with other sweeteners to see if they work as well.

1 pound of green tomatoes, cored and cut into ½-inch pieces (reserve juice and seeds)

Sugar substitute equal to ½ cup of sugar, preferably a sweet fiber such as oligofructose (Sweetperfection or Just Like Sugar) or a stevia blend with oligofructose or erythritol

2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of grated zest (the amount from 1 medium lemon)

Pinch of salt

1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick

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In a heavy sauce pan, mix the tomatoes, any reserved juice and seeds, and the sweetener. Let stand for 24 hours to draw out the juices.
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Grate the thin, yellow part of the rind from the lemon into the pan and add the lemon juice. Bring mixture to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook uncovered for about 40 minutes or until thick. Use like jam, as a topping for yogurt or ice cream, or spread in a low-carb, almond tart crust. (I'm going to try it in a turnover recipe I've been working on.) Refrigerate or freeze.

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Recipe makes 1 cup of jam or 16 servings of 1 tablespoon each.

Total carbs--9.2 grams; Fiber 2 grams; Net: 7.2 grams.

Carbs per serving--0.57 grams; Fiber 0.12 grams; Net: 0.45 grams

Tip: Additional advice from Lynne: Use green tomatoes raw or cook them down. If they are cooked for a short time, they will be slimy.

(C) 2010, Judy Barnes Baker: Carb Wars; Sugar is the New Fat

WHY WE GET FAT AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT, by Gary Taubes

Breaking news: Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It by Gary Taubes, the author of The New York Times best seller Good Calories, Bad Calories, is due out on December 28.

Go to Amazon right this instant and order this book! The pre-publication sales have already reached 6,748 in books on Amazon's website, and that number will skyrocket as the word gets around that it is available. All the sales that are placed for a book prior to publication will vest on the day it is released, so all our orders will be counted on December 28. (The rank for book sales is determined by the total number of orders placed in the least amount of time.) Let's make this book open on The New York Times Best Seller List as NUMBER ONE! That should get some attention, don't you think?

Here are the advance reviews for the book:

"In the New York Times best seller Good Calories, Bad Calories, acclaimed science writer Gary Taubes argues that certain kinds of carbohydrates—not fats and not simply excess calories—have led to our current obesity epidemic. Now he brings that message to a wider, nonscientific audience in this exciting new book. Persuasively argued, straightforward, practical, and with fresh evidence for Taubes’s claim, Why We Get Fat makes his critical argument newly accessible.Taubes reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century—none more damaging than the “calories-in, calories-out” model of why we get fat—and the good science that has been ignored, especially regarding insulin’s regulation of our fat tissue. He also answers key questions: Why are some people thin and others fat? What roles do exercise and genetics play in our weight? What foods should we eat or avoid?"

Gary Taubes is a correspondent for Science magazine; his writing has also appeared in The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine. He has received three Science in Society Journalism Awards from the National Association of Science Writers, the only print journalist so recognized. He is currently a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Investigator at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.

(C) 2010, Judy Barnes Baker
Carb Wars; Sugar is the New Fat