One of our favorite regular treats around our house is muffins and jam.  Of course, these are not regular muffins and jam, but their superhero counterparts.  But to taste them you would not know the difference.  They look normal and taste delicious even to normal people.  (Yes, eating healthy makes you a little bit weird.)  The superhero qualities show up once they get into your gut and go to work.

What is the biggest deficiency in our western diet?  We certainly get all the carbs we need (which is actually almost zero.)  We get massively too many simple carbs in the form of sugar.  We get 10 to 50 times as much vegetable oil as we need.  We usually get enough protein in the American diet, although this is a major deficiency in lots of other countries.  Unless we are being super vigilant, we will get enough saturated fat.  Most of us are deficient in omega 3 oils – the fish oils, but we actually need only very small amounts of them.  Water?  No, most people get plenty of hydration these days.  So what macronutrient has been left out?  The answer you were about to pop out with is correct, fiber.  We need 25 to 35 grams of fiber every day and the average person gets less than half of that.

Ah yes!  Isn't that the stuff in whole grains they keep telling us about?  Yes and no.  Yes, they do keep telling you this in order to sell more grain products, and no, that is not what you need.  Isn't fiber what you need to poop?  Nope, but that is what “they” have been telling you.  Fiber provides bulk that makes up some of the volumes of your poop.  But 90% of your poop is bacteria, not fiber.  The fiber in whole grains is a type of fiber called insoluble fiber.  It is like sawdust.  It stays exactly the same from one end to the other.  What you really need is soluble fiber.  These fibers absorb water to form gels which feed the good guy bacteria.  If you want good poops, you can use soluble fiber to feed the bacteria that make up those poops.  

So do you really need fiber?  What you need is lots of good guy bacteria in your gut to crowd out bad guys that cause inflammation and leaky gut.  Soluble fiber is one way of helping to create that situation.  The challenge is all the foods we eat that feed the bad guys.  Bad guys love sugar, vegetable oils, and poorly digested damaged proteins - so basically desserts and soft drinks, fried foods, and pizza.  They also thrive in toxic gut environments created by pesticides, herbicides, hormones, food chemicals, preservatives, artificial anything, and most of all stress.  In short, the average American diet grows bad guy gut bugs.  

Eating super clean helps, or a mono-diet, like a carnivore diet helps, or fiber helps.

So, since the average person eats less than 15 grams of fiber a day, and most people are not willing to eat super clean or go carnivore, how can we get more fiber into our diet?  Most health authorities recommend increasing whole grains and beans in your diet to do this.  But the reality is these recommendations are found to actually increase gut inflammation.  Some folks say to eat more fruit, but in truth, most fruit has very little fiber in it.  Kiwi, apples, berries, figs, green bananas, and prunes are okay and provide 6 to 8 grams of fiber per cup.  But how many of you are going to eat 6 cups of fruit every day?  Besides, that much fruit each day has so much fructose sugar in it that you will develop a fatty liver.

So what can an average person do to increase the fiber levels easily in a way that is not going to cause other health problems?  How can we pump up the fiber without pumping up the sugar or carbs?  This is where fiber muffins and sugar-free berry jam make an entrance and take a bow.  We are not talking about your Grandmother's fiber muffins made with wheat bran that you try to choke down with lots of milk.  They were rough because of the sawdust texture of wheat bran.  These have a nice balance of both soluble and insoluble fiber that gives them a soft delightful texture.  Plus they have no wheat to irritate the gut lining.  Berries are a good source of fiber, but we don't want all that sugar.  So here enters the sugar-free berry jam I created.  Let's get started.

Fiber Muffins

1 cup rolled flax seed

1 cup almond flour

½ cup oat fiber

¾ cup Dr. Dave Double Sugar

1 tsp Balanced Salt

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

     mix everything in a 2-quart bowl – add

1 cube of melted butter

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla 

¾ cup nut milk

     hand mix until well blended

     spoon into 12 baking cups 

     bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees

There you have it, a dozen delicious muffins with 10 grams of fiber each.  A couple of these a day and you are set to go!  Now we just need some berry jam to put on these nutritious sugar-free high fiber muffins.  Just like the muffins, we want a topping that has no added sugar and is high in fiber.  There are low-sugar recipes for jams available, but they all still have lots of sugar in them.  The reason for this is because the sugar acts as a preservative.  Yes, sugar poisons many bacteria and molds.  The sugar in jams and jellies really allows you to store these on a shelf for years and years.  To make a zero sugar jam, we simply have to keep it in the fridge like any fresh food.  I find it will last a couple of months this way, though it rarely lasts that long because we eat it all before then.  This recipe uses Dr. Dave's Double sugar for sweetness and some lemon juice for tartness and to increase the acidity which also makes it fend off bacteria.  The fiber comes from the fiber in berries as well as the type of soluble fiber that makes it gel; the pectin.  This is really easy...

Berry Jam - sugar free

4 cups fresh or defrosted frozen blueberries

¾ cup Dr. Dave sugar

juice from 1 lemon

6 Tbs pectin 

1 Tbs butter (decreases foaming)

     place in blender and blend for 20 seconds

     pour into the pan on the stove 

     bring to a slow boil for 1 minute - add

10 oz room temperature blackberries or raspberries

     return to a slow boil for 1 minute

     cool then put into canning jars

This is a super simple jam recipe.  I make a slightly chunky base of blueberries then add whole blackberries or raspberries because I like the whole pieces of fruit.  If you prefer a smoother jam, then simply blend all the berries together in the blender.  Always use real canning jars as they are made to withstand hot liquids.  This recipe makes a delicious jam that complements the muffins perfectly.  We use this jam when I make keto waffles or pancakes from pretty much the same ingredients as the muffins.  I simply use extra nut milk to make the batter thinner.  I also leave out the Dr. Dave sugar and add a bit of pure stevia as the sugar burns and leaves the cakes and waffles black.  Be sure in these recipes to use actual pure oat fiber, and not simply oat flour.

We like a little butter along with the jam on our muffins, so I created a Brain Butter to support energy production in our brains.  This is just 8 ounces of grass fed organic butter at room temperature combined with 8 ounces of C8 Brain Boost oil.  I blend it with a wand blender and put it into a glass container to keep in the fridge.

So there you have it, a delicious way to add a bunch of good fibers into your diet without any of the downsides other fibers tend to have.

Take care,
 

David  

It's back!  My supplier finally got in a new shipment of C8 caprylic acid for supporting the energy production in our brains.


 

Ellen update:   

As I said in the article, Ellen loves her muffins and jam.  The challenge is keeping enough of them in the house!  In this case she is also having eggs scrambled with jicama cheese.  I was experimenting the other day and decided to see if I could create a very low carb cheese without nuts as a base.  On a whim I though why not try jicama.  The net result came out well for consistency and utility, but the flavor was a little bland with horseradish overtones.  But it works well as an addition to scrambled eggs.