For a couple of years now, I have been playing with a new sweetener on the market called allulose.  This is almost a magic type of sugar.  It was originally discovered back in the 1940s in wheat and has since been found in figs, raisins, and jackfruit.  It occurs naturally, but in minimal quantities.  It has the same chemical formula as both of the most common sugars, glucose, and fructose, C6H12O6, but is configured differently.  It is actually a twisted version of fructose, which is how it is made today.  Fructose is exposed to an enzyme that twists it into the allulose form.

So why is it magic?  For one, it has no effect on blood glucose; nada, zero, none.  That makes it completely safe for diabetics.  In fact, it is so safe that the FDA has decided that adding allulose to a product does not require the nutrition label to count it as added sugars.  Secondly, it has only one-tenth the calories of regular sugar.  Very little of it is metabolized and used by the body.  Third, it is keto friendly.  It warrants a carb count of zero on the nutrition label of a product.   Fourth, it actually tastes like and acts like sugar.  It is the only sugar replacement that I have found that can be made into a caramel sauce and have it stay a sauce.  Five, it does not cause digestive distress.  Most of the allulose is absorbed into the bloodstream from the small intestine and excreted unchanged through the kidneys.  This is similar to the erythritol-stevia blend I have had in the office for many years.

Allulose is similar in sweetness to erythritol; it's about 70% as sweet as sugar.  Allulose is better than erythritol because it does not have that cooling taste/feel on the tongue and allulose does not re-crystallize after being heated, like erythritol.  Additionally, those people that have issues with sugar alcohols are usually good with allulose as it is a real sugar molecule and not an alcohol sugar.  Since it is only about 70% as sweet as regular sugar, many companies have come out with allulose blended with either monk fruit sweetener or stevia to balance out the taste to equal sugar in sweetness.  Right now these products cost about $15 a pound on Amazon, but since I buy 55 lb bags at a time, I can put them in the office for only $10 a pound.

So what else is good about allulose?  The real fun is in being able to bake cookies, make ice cream, and create chocolate candies without having to deal with the difficulties inherent in using erythritol.  It literally functions just like sugar.  For instance, I have been obsessing about creating bread made from almost all egg white.  Not only is this perfect for the keto diet I am on, but it creates an excellent source of protein that feels and acts like bread.  One problem with egg white bread is that it does not brown when baking.  By adding a bit of allulose, I get a lovely golden brown crust on my bread.

Years ago I had a newsletter about how to make sugar-free chocolate candy.  Link  Well, allulose does an even better job in making chocolate.  Here is my new recipe.

2 cups of cocoa butter wafers

remove ½ cup of wafers and chop them up

heat remaining in a glass or silicone bowl in the microwave

heat for 1 minute, stir and continue heating 10 sec at a time

do this until it reaches 116 degrees

now blend with a hand blender till smooth

add chopped pieces and blend again, add

1 tsp dry vanilla powder and

¼ cup glycerin and

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder and

1 cup allulose/monk fruit – blend till smooth 

You can either pour this into your 11x17 pan

or you can add 

1 cup peanut butter or chopped nuts 

or chopped keto cereal or dried fruit. Mix, then pour

Let cool till firm, then slice to size

When using peanut butter, you may omit the glycerin

Four months ago I posted a newsletter titled Muffins and Jam that featured my sugar-free three-berry jam recipe.  In that recipe, I used ¾ cup of Dr Dave Double Sugar.  If you wanted to do that recipe with allulose, just replace the Dr Dave Double Sugar with 1 1/2 cups of allulose.

What about good old fashion chocolate chip cookies?  Here we see a bit of difference between erythritol and allulose.  Allulose will produce a softer cookie while erythritol will produce a crisper cookie.  So the choice of sweetener will allow you to customize your cookie to your own preference.  One of the keys to making sugar-free and keto chocolate chip cookies turn out well is the technique you use in mixing the ingredients as well as the temperature and thickness of the dough on the baking tray.  It is really vital to do a super job of creaming the butter and sweetener together – like ten minutes of creaming.  Generally, keto cookies use super fine almond flour and a small amount of coconut flour to get the right texture, but a secret ingredient to really give the cookie both a nice chew and crunch is konjac root or glucomannan.  It is what they make those miracle noodles out of.  Another mainstay of gluten-free baking is a bit of xanthan gum to help hold everything together.  A final tip I always like is adding a touch of blackstrap molasses to give the cookies that nice brown sugar taste.  (In case you didn't know, brown sugar is just white sugar with molasses added to it.)  Here is my favorite recipe:

Blend together then set aside:

1 ¼ cups almond flour

2 Tbs coconut flour

1 Tbs glucomannan powder

½ tsp each of salt, xanthan gum, and baking soda

Whip 10 Tbs. softened butter for 2 minutes then

Cream with ½ cup allulose or erythritol for 8 minutes

Add 1 tsp each molasses and vanilla, and 1 egg – mix

Gradually blend in the dry ingredients

Mix in keto chocolate chips, and nuts if you like

For cake-like cookies, chill the dough before spooning it onto a baking tray

For flatter, crisper cookies use room temp dough and flatten the cookies a bit.

Bake at 350 degrees till done.

All these recipes will produce no sugar keto gluten-free delicious desserts.  This is a useful step in moving toward a healthier diet.  Is it ultimately the best choice?  Ideally, we would only eat foods in their natural state – whole vegetables, fruits, and meats with spices and herbs.  Confections that taste sweet, even though we make them in a way to avoid the negative impact, still entice us to eat more food than we really need.  Sadly, the better food tastes, the more we eat and ignore our natural body signals that tell us we are full.  The result we see all around us every day.  The hyper-delicious food that is super available has caused the obesity epidemic and most of the chronic disease tidal wave that is drowning our populace.  These intense flavors hijack our brain chemistry and propel us into unhealthy relationships with food.

The bottom line is that sugar-free food options are a valuable step on the path to better health, but are not the bottom line.  True health requires us to return to a dietary style that our bodies thrived on for the last several hundred thousand years, not the food fantasy circus we have invented over the last hundred years or so.

Take care,

David     

        
Ellen update:    

Well it was a laid back Saturday (which actually means I was supposed to be doing an online class and had not gotten on to it) so Ellen subliminally suggested we go out for lunch.  As usually happens in such scenarios I believed it was my idea, but not.  We decided to go back to Texas Roadhouse, a place we had tried several years ago.  I of course checked out what was on the menu that was gluten free and low carb by going to their website first -  a necessary step these days.  Once there we used that famous old folks tactic - she ordered salad and I ordered the protein and veggies.  That way we can share everything and have a very nice meal.