FAQ

Where can I get the best prices on ingredients?

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.

1 pound Just Like Sugar Table Top Sweetener — 16 oz  $17.59

1 jar Artisana 100% Organic Raw Coconut Butter — 16 oz  $11.49

1 jar Amazon Therapeutic Labs Yacon Syrup — 11.5 fl oz  $18.69

1 bag Bob’s Red Mill Unsweetened Shredded Coconut — 24 oz   6.99

2 cans Thai Kitchen Organic Coconut Milk — 14 fl oz Each / Pack of 2  $4.98

1 jar Vitacost Extra Virgin Certified Organic Coconut Oil — 16 fl oz  $8.95

1 bag Bob’s Red Mill All Natural Arrowroot Starch/Flour — 20 oz $6.49

1 bag Navitas Naturals Organic Cacao Powder Raw Chocolate — 16 oz  $12.99

1 bag Eden Foods Agar Agar Sea Vegetable Flakes — 1 oz   7.59

Why is chicory root sweetener so expensive?

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.

Why is healthy food so expensive?

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!

Can I substitute other sweeteners in your recipes?

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.

Why do you use shredded coconut as flour in your desserts?

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.

Why don’t you use coconut flour?

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!

Why don’t you use almond flour in your recipes?

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.

Can I use almond flour/meal instead of coconut in your recipes?

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.

How many cups of are in a pound of Just Like Sugar Table Top?

There are 4.9 cups of Just Like Sugar Table Top per pound. Chicory root fiber is lighter than sugar. There’s no denying that Just Like Sugar is really expensive. We’re all looking for a less expensive healthy sweetener with zero carbs, and so far I haven’t found a better source. Many other alternative sweeteners are comparable in price. And the cost of disease is un-measurable. You can also substitute your favorite sweetener.

Why do all your recipes use Just Like Sugar Table Top?

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.

I don’t have a food processor. Can I make your desserts without one?

That will be challenging. How are you going to grind your Paleo flour without a food processor?

Many of my recipes use a food processor. It’s mostly the cakes, cookies and pie crusts. That’s because the food processor is the best way I’ve found to grind coconut and nuts. Otherwise they get stuck in my blender. (I almost ruined my tough BlendTec trying!) There are other solutions, but they require even more special equipment.

Basically you have 4 choices:
1) Get a food processor, Try CraigsList, Goodwill or Amazon used equipment. I recommend either a KitchenAid or a Cuisinart at least 11-cup capacity food processor.
2) Your second choice is to buy your nuts already ground – like using almond meal instead of shredded coconut. Here’s a conversion table that can help you.
3) Skip the recipes that require a food processor – like cakes, cookies and pie crusts. You’ve still got tons of great recipes that you CAN make, like puddings, ice creams, milkshakes, smoothies, sauces, frostings, crisps, etc.
4) Skip sweets altogether, and you’ll be better off for it.

How many Calories are in your Dessert Recipes?

I don’t count calories. I focus on eating real food.

But many people do like to count. If you wish to compute the nutrition facts, here’s a site that will do it. You can just cut and paste the recipe in. A few of my ingredients are new and aren’t in their nutrition database yet – so you’ll need to put in something comparable. For the Just Like Sugar, I put in Organic Zero sweetener, or a zero calorie sweetener that is similar in weight. Have fun!

http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php

Calories are an approximate measure of energy invented 100 years ago. And they’re not exact, since the true energy content varies by how the products was grown, soil content, preparation method, age of the food, etc. More importantly, calories have nothing to do with nutritional content. My solution is to eat only high nutritionally dense foods. So I can skip empty foods and calorie counting.
For me the danger area is carbs. I found out that it is carbs and sugars that set up the metabolism for weight gain. That’s why I eat Paleo with very few carbs and zero sugars. Especially at dinnertime, any carbs that I eat go straight to my waistline. I move my body during the day to get my metabolism cracking. I listen to my body. Then I eat a very light dinner with no carbs, and skip all counting. I find that my weight the next morning is level. Hooray! That’s my way, but everyone has a different metabolism. I hope the nutrition calculator works for you.

BTW, shredded coconut is low in carbs, only 27%. Almond flour is only 31% carbs. Compare that to most other flours which are 71% – 90% carbs, and you’ll see why people gain weight eating conventional sweets.

 

Your recipes are too sweet for me. Can I use less sweetener?

Yes, you can use any amount of sweetener and the recipes will turn out fine.

The recipes are designed as a bridge for people accustomed to a high level of sweetness, to kick sugar dependency. However, if you’re ready to do that, you can reduce the amount of sweetener in the recipes.

It will save a lot of money too. To say that chicory root is expensive is an understatement. Believe me, I searched for other possibilities when writing the book. After studying and experimenting with hundreds of sweeteners, slowly Just Like Sugar came up as the best so far. Read about my research in this online booklet: 300 Sweeteners, Which is Best?  and my article What are the Best Paleo Sweeteners?

You can use other sweeteners in my recipes. Many people have a favorite sweetener, and they all work fine. However, if you substitute, you may miss out on the benefits of chicory root.  It is zero carb, zero sugar, no blood sugar spike or insulin response. No sucrose, no fructose. It’s a natural pre-biotic to support healthy intestinal flora, and it doesn’t cause cavities. I even visited the factory to check it out. Read about what I found here.

I think the best way to buy Just Like Sugar Table Top in the 1# green bag is from VitaCost, with free shipping on orders over a certain amount. Go to this link to all the best prices on my website here. I don’t make any money on it – I just want to make it easy.

I’m a Vegan. Can I be a Vegan on the Paleo Diet?

Sure you can. You can be a Paleo Vegan. If you’re healthier on a plant-based diet, you can be Paleo too! Our Paleo ancestors ate what they could find, depending on their climate and customs. In some areas, especially cold climates, they ate meat. In other areas, they ate primarily plants. Check out this chart of foods on the Paleo Diet which excludes processed foods, sugars, sweet fruits, grains, beans, and extracted oils.

All of the recipes in my Paleo Desserts book are vegetarian and dairy-free. There are 73 Vegan recipes that contain no eggs, such as Key Lime Pie, and Chocolate Mousse. Click here for a Chart of all Recipes By Diet.