I have been obsessed with gummies this past week.  I am talking about those soft, gently chewy candies that range from candy orange slices to gummy bears.  Why am I obsessing on gummies you ask?  Well, Ellen and I are two weeks into a fast mimicking diet – the Fiber Fast I wrote about last week.  Actually, by the time you read this, we should have finished our third-week by now and be on a serious amino acid therapy to take advantage of the pumped-up growth hormone levels building new tissues for our bodies.

So naturally, when you are not eating anything but fiber, you think about how you can make fiber taste good.  One idea I came up with is gummies. To be useful, however, these have to be sugar-free gummies.  More than that they have to be carb-free gummies.  This is relevant because most brands of so-called sugar-free gummies made commercially are made with maltitol - a sugar alcohol.  Although this technically is not classed as a sugar, it has almost the same impact on blood sugar as regular sugar.  This is a small bit of insanity as maltitol is the main ingredient in candy made for diabetics.  Yet it still spikes your blood sugar like regular sugar – exactly what you don't want for a diabetic.  It almost seems like these candy manufacturers don't really care about diabetics' lives and just want to sell candy.  What's with that?

Okay, there are a couple of keto gummies made that use soluble fiber like inulin along with pectin fiber and gelatin.  We have a few packages of these, but Ellen says they are too sticky for her dental work.  Technically these types of gummies can be used on a fiber-fast as they are mainly fiber, have no digestible carbs, and the little protein in the gelatin is of a composition that does not shut down autophagy. As a reminder, autophagy is a way of reducing loose skin by cleaning up damaged cells. Basically they are a sweet-tasting treat that has no impact on our body but instead helps heal the gut by supporting the growth of good guy bacteria in the gut.  This is all good except for the chewy stickiness interacting with dental bridges.

So why did I go into obsession?  Let's call it creative inspiration. That sounds much better.  I wanted to create a better gummy.  I have made gummies in the past based on the use of gelatin and fruit juice.  This is super simple but contains the carbs in the fruit juice, plus just using gelatin gives us the chewy version of a gummy.  In looking at the ingredients of ordinary sugar-based gummies that have the consistency Ellen likes, I saw that they were made from pectin – the same stuff used to make jams and jellies.  After endless hours of internet research, I found a couple of recipes for low sugar gummies made from a special pectin designed for low sugar jams and jellies.  Normal pectin only works in the presence of gobs of sugar.  This type of pectin is called high-methoxy pectin.  It also requires an acid environment to gel up.  Often natural fruit contains enough fruit acid to serve this purpose.  If not, the recipe has you add citric acid or the box of pectin will already have acid in it.  Special low sugar pectin, called low-methoxy pectin, is supposed to gel when exposed to calcium instead of acid and lots of sugar.  That is what they say anyway.  They lie.  When I bought some at the store, I noticed there was acid in the ingredients with the note that it was for tartness.  The recipes also calls for lower amounts of sugar, like one half a cup instead of two cups per three cups of fruit.  One is supposed to add stevia or some other sweetener to make it into a low sugar jam.  This did not help my quest to make gummies.

My quest was complicated by my desire to avoid fruit juice.  That does not work on a fiber fast.  So I was trying to make a chocolate coconut milk fiber gummy.  I was able to make a very soft gummy (like custard soft) with the low sugar pectin.  However, the taste was not very good.  The tart acid taste just did not work with chocolate.  So next my quest went towards finding a low sugar pectin without any acid added.  One such pectin exists called Pomona's Universal Pectin.  It even has a packet of calcium included with it for gelling the pectin.  Curiously, however, the instructions all called for adding various amounts of lemon juice to the fruit mix depending upon how acid the starting fruit was.  Out of curiosity, I decided to find out what would happen if I neutralized the acid with some bicarbonate of soda added to the fruit juice.  Surprise, surprise, the pectin did not gel at all with the acid neutralized, even when I added twice the amount of calcium it was supposed to need.  How could I get around the acid chocolate taste?  By now I had made about 8 batches of different gummies trying different variations of ingredients.

Miracle noodles have the consistency we were looking for.  They are made from the konjac root extract glucomannan.  I happen to have a container of glucomannan as I use it in my gut healer fiber blend.  I tried a gummy just from glucomannan, but it melted at room temperature.  In researching the necessary ratios for making noodles, I discovered that Europe recently banned glucomannan fruit cups, a popular treat in Asia because several people had choked to death on them.  The fruit cup candies do not dissolve like pectin or gelatin in the mouth, and if you try swallowing one whole you can choke on them.  So much for a konjac based chocolate gummy.  I could still add the powder as a thickener for my gummy.

My current solution is to use a blend of several fibers to form my carb-free chocolate coconut gummies.  I am using pectin, glucomannan, gelatin, and several scoops of my gut healer fiber blend all mixed into water, coconutmilk, stevia, and cocoa powder.  After a good blending and then heating it up to boiling for a minute, the mixture is poured into little rectangular molds.  The final product is sweet and chocolatey while being soft and easy on the dental work.

I had to warn Ellen not to eat too many of them, however.  Each tray of these gummies is equivalent to the fiber in about 20 cups of cabbage.  We have to work up to that amount of fiber each day.  That much would be very healthy for us, but we need to build up the quantity and specific types of gut bacteria that live and grow on these kinds of fiber.  These bacteria convert all this fiber into nutrients that feed the gut cells to help them heal.  We have been augmenting the strains of bacteria for this purpose with a probiotic drink I fermented from strains of bacteria from Switzerland (called Bravo).  My concept has been to focus on healing the gut during this fiber-fast since the gut is able to rest from its normal job of sorting out what to absorb and what to keep out.  Right now we are eating almost nothing for the gut to digest or absorb so it can be on vacation.  Trying to heal the gut while it is working is very difficult.

So now you can see why I have been obsessing on gummies this last week.  I am building a protocol that is workable for regular folks to be able to enjoy the massive benefits of fasting plus gut-healing, plus toxin removal without actually having to endure the challenge of a several week water fast.  Right now folks are healing their diabetes with three-week water fasts.  This is how you turn around metabolic syndrome, which sets us up for so many degenerative diseases.  Fasting is the supercharged method for healing the body on so many levels.  I am trying to create a better and more achievable way to accomplish this.  

Creative obsession can be useful at times.

Take care,


David    


We have received the second batch of 20 copies of my book The Balanced Life.  For those of you that signed up for the book last year, we have set your copies aside.  They are available in the office for $17.99, and they are also available on Amazon.com


New service in Office - free mask sterilization
I was getting creative the other day and decided to create a mask sterilizer for the office.  Using a small UVC sterilizing light I mounted into a file box does the job perfectly.  Hang the mask from the hook inside the lid and close the lid.  Push the timer button one time for 5 minutes of sterilizing light.  Be sure the lid is closed as UVC light will damage your eyes and skin.  Five minutes will kill any viruses or bacteria that has collected on your mask.  Directions for making your own sterilizer here.


Ellen update:    

Ellen has been working on a new project, a book for both adults and children on how growing up works.  Many of the new art works in the office feature paper dolls, a replay of Ellen's childhood when she enjoyed playing with paper dolls.  These are pieces that will appear in the book.  The idea is to present the information in visual form, as a personal story, as a philosophic description, and as a children's story.  Her friend Catherine is doing the writing of the children's story part.  By presenting this information in many ways, the hope is to be able to reach the beliefs and story of the inner child within that drives the real reasons behind our lives.  Here Ellen is describing the first chapter to our spiritual support circle that meets every couple weeks.