FAQ

Here’s a list of links to some of the ingredients I use a lot in Paleo Desserts. I don’t have any connection with them – I just want it to be easy. http://janeshealthykitchen.com/ingredients/ .

VitaCost generally has better prices than grocery stores or Amazon. They offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount.

Yes, Just Like Sugar Table Top sweetener is expensive. It costs a lot more than cane sugar and corn sugar, which are subsidized to the tune of billions. We like to compare prices, but often forget that sugar and corn syrup prices are artificially low. Even many lower-carb sweeteners such as Truvia, Erythritol and Xylitol are made from cheap gmo corn.

It costs more to make chicory inulin. But then how can you measure the cost of disease? Or the cost of childhood obesity?

My recipes have been tested with Just Like Sugar Table top, however you may substitute your favorite sweetener in any of my recipes, at your own risk. With Just Like Sugar Table Top natural chicory root you get a huge low-carb benefit. That’s why I use it! For the best prices, I suggest you buy from VitaCost.com or Netrition.com.

We often compare the prices of industiral foods, with the price of food that’s produced with care. I question this. Why compare expensive healthy food to cheap, industrial foods like corn, wheat, and soy? These are two completely different types of food, with huge nutritional differences, so we can’t really compare them.

Most large-scale industrial crops receive huge subsidies, and their cheap price doesn’t reflect the real cost to produce them. This means healthy food is sold at fair market price, but junk food prices can be artificially low due to subsidies. Healthy soil makes healthy plants. It is more expensive to produce food that is alive with nutrition. The good work of real human hands costs more than industrial farming. We often don’t give small farmers credit for their contribution to our health.

What about the hidden costs? We don’t know how to measure the invisible costs to the environment and to future generations of chemicals, pesticides, gmo, and mono-crops that deplete the soil. It’s hard to quantify, but the cost is real. We don’t consider the long-term detrimental effects of poor nutrition to our health and well-being. How do we measure the cost of a lifetime of poor health? What’s the price of a life with diabetes, obesity, heart disease, or being incapacitated?

Instead of looking at the food budget alone, what if we measure the ALL the costs of health and food together? Over an entire human life? Do we include the pharmaceuticals and the high medical costs that result from poor food choices?  What if we include all our medical expenses, pharmaceuticals, and the hidden costs of lost health? When we consider all these hidden costs, home gardening may be the most cost effective of all. Perhaps healthy food is the only reasonable choice, in fact it seems inexpensive!

Yes, you can. You’re free to  experiment with any sweetener you like in my recipes – at your own risk. I don’t object to this idea – I think it is a good one. The recipes are designed for great flavor, high nutrition, and an absolute minimum carbs and sugars. Just Like Sugar Table Top has zero carbs and sugars.

But unfortunately chicory root fiber is expensive. If you prefer to use another sweetener in my recipes, this is at least a step toward health. You won’t get a low-carb, low-sugar dessert, but it will be affordable, and that is a good thing!

I did a tremendous amount of research on sweeteners before choosing chicory root. Check out my articles “300 Sweeteners, Which is Best?”  and Paleo Sweeteners.

Shredded coconut is a whole food, rich in flavor and nutritional value. It tastes delicious, and unlike almond, very few people are allergic to coconut. Shredded coconut costs one third to half the price of other Paleo flours per pound, such as almond flour or coconut flour. It’s an extremely flexible ingredient that can be used in so many ways. In some Asian countries coconut is called “The tree of a thousand uses”. Shredded coconut is widely available in almost any grocery store. Make sure you buy the full-fat, whole food version.

I never liked the taste of coconut flour. It tastes dry and fibrous to me. Many people are unaware that the coconut flour we buy in the grocery stores is not a whole food, and it’s not Paleo. Commercial coconut flour is refined & de-fatted with chemicals and heat to sell the oil. The resulting mash is then pulverized including the hull and husk, and dried. The mixture with hull and husk make the flour darker in color, high-carb (71%), and very high fiber, but low in flavor and nutrition. Instead of calling it “coconut flour”, we should call it “coconut husk flour”.

In many Asian countries where coconut is a tradition, this by-product is fed to the pigs. I use it for flouring baking pans – it’s fantastic!

Instead of coconut flour, my Paleo Dessert recipes use pure white shredded coconut, ground in a food processor. It’s extremely low in carbs (27%), plus it makes the most delicious cakes and cookies!

Almond meal/flour is two to three times the price of shredded coconut per pound. Many people have tree-nut allergies. Almonds may be sprayed, irradiated and heat treated. However compared to all other flours, gluten-free included, almond meal is still one of the best flours! It is low in carbs, delicious, and nutritious. It’s also convenient, because you don’t have to grind it.

I prefer coconut, because it is delicious, not subject to the sometimes rough processing of almonds, and most people can eat it.

Yes, you can! My recipes have been designed for coconut, however you’re free to experiment with almond meal – at your own risk. I don’t guarantee it will work in every single recipe. But I have tried it and it works quite well with this simple conversion chart.  Click here to see the chart.

Just Like Sugar has some good qualities going for it. It tastes delicious. It has zero calories, zero carbs, zero glycemic index, zero fructose, and it causes no sugar rush or insulin response, unlike agave, coconut sugar, maple syrup, honey, cane or beet sugar. It is a pre-biotic that promotes healthy intestinal flora. It does not ferment therefore it does not cause tooth cavities like sugar. It does not cause gastric upset like Xylitol. It does not have a cooling taste like Xylitol and Erythritol.

It is not made of genetically modified ingredients like other sweeteners such as Truvia, Xylitol, Erythritol and beet sugar. It dissolves and crystallizes like sugar, so it can be used to create traditional desserts, unlike stevia and syrups. There’s no other sweetener I’ve found that has all these qualities. At least not yet. My greatest desire would be to recommend a healthy sweetener that’s affordable for everyone.

I tested a LOT of sweeteners personally, and found this to be a very good one. You can read my research and sweetener comparisons in these articles on my blog: “300 Sweeteners, Which is Best?”  and Paleo Sweeteners.  I visited the Just Like Sugar factory to check it out. Click here to see what I learned. It is amazing. They grow the chicory root in Brazil, ship it to the Netherlands to make inulin fiber, and then ship it to the factory in the USA to blend with orange peel, Vitamin C and Calcium.  Just Like Sugar was invented by a brilliant guy named Mike Sylver, at the request of a team of doctors looking for a healthy sweetener. I checked it up and down and every which way, and found that chicory root it a really good sweetener for just about everyone. It’s pretty amazing.