My New Favorite Sweetener

If you're looking for a low-carb sweetener with no aftertaste, no franken-ingredients, and that doesn't upset your stomach, try monk fruit (also known as luo han guo). This is what Quest bars were sweetened with when they first came out. Monk fruit is Dr. Davis approved.

You can buy monk fruit in powdered or liquid form; both are super-concentrated. They might seem expensive, but you use the powder by the spoonful (even in baking recipes) and the liquid by the drop. The baking recipes I've made with the powder have turned out well.

Available from Amazon. Beware monk fruit sweeteners with erythritol.

The package of powdered monk fruit sweetener I bought says, "Use 1/8 teaspoon to create the same sweet taste as 1 teaspoon of sugar." But it's so sweet that I use 1/10 the amount. To replace a cup of sugar, I would use 5 teaspoons of monk fruit sweetener. Tip: hand-stir this in before using the beaters. It's such a fine powder that it flies up and out of the bowl if you don't.

My other favorite is Lakanto liquid monk fruit drops. I like to put a few drops on yogurt or in homemade hot chocolate. It's available at Kroger, Vitacost, iHerb.com and Amazon.

Also available in vanilla.

Comments

Black Friday Deals for Good Health

Here are some great Black Friday deals--all ONLINE--that can benefit your health. I've used most of these products and vendors and recommend them. I'm not an affiliate. Vitamins iHerb.com is having a 25% off Black Friday and Cyber Monday site-wide sale. Vitacost.com is offering $10 off $50, stackable with a variety of other deals. Tried and True Supplements I use: Doctor's Best magnesium ( peach powder , unflavored powder , and tablets ) Country Life kelp tablets Solgar zinc, 22 mg NOW vitamin D, 5,000 IU NOW astaxanthin, 4 mg Jarrow hyaluronic acid, 120 mg Solaray vitamin C tablets, 485 mg Collagen Powder, Dips, Dressings, Mayo and Sauces Primal Kitchen products--all made without added sugar or Frankenfoods--are on sale. If you remember Mark Sisson from the Mark's Daily Apple blog, Primal Kitchen is his company. PrimalKitchen.com (25% off this week only) iHerb.com (25% off) Vitacost.com (20% off) I love their vanilla, peanut butter and chocolate-mint collagen pow...

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...

Diabetes Management: Why DIY?

Answer: because probably, nobody else will. Awhile back, my mother's new primary care doctor saw her for a checkup. According to Mom, the doctor took her blood sugar and wrote "diabetes out of control" on her chart and prescribed Metformin and Lantus (insulin). The doctor didn't look at the blood sugar records Mom brought. Maybe it's the new medication, maybe because an infection cleared up, or maybe Mom has gotten more insulin sensitive, but she's been getting hypos in the morning. It's dangerous to have blood sugar get too low during the night. The doctor is hard to reach, and who knows how good she is at dosing insulin. Mom had been fiddling around with her evening insulin dose, but without checking her blood sugar first. So today, after she got her blood sugar up from this morning's level of 55 (70-100 is normal), I suggested she check her blood sugar before taking her evening insulin. When she checked it tonight, it was 70. After doing some...

MORE Black Friday/Cyber Monday Deals

Maybe you've heard that Black Friday deals are nothing but a come-on this year. There may be some fake deals out there--there always have been. But I saved about $115 on supplements, groceries, vegetable seeds, and...primer. $42.78 at iHerb.com over $10 at Vitacost $4.70 on Burpee vegetable seeds $45 on a free bottle of Ideal Immunity probiotics $12.50 on a gallon of Kilz primer at Ace Hardware I posted a link to my previous post at the Inner Circle, and some of the members added links to even more great deals. Thank you, members natural1 and saukriver! ANOVA Sous vides are on sale for up to 60% off . I've never used a sous vide, but some people use them to make yogurt (among other things). This one by Inkbird is 31% off on Ebay, and it's apparently quieter than the Anova. A small Kitchen Aid food chopper is on sale for $45. A larger Cuisinart food processor with slicing and shredding blades is on sale for $100 at Macy's and Amazon --the same price I paid for...

My GERD is Cured! Low-carb Hits the Mark

It's a good day for paying your bills And it's a good day for curing your ills So take a deep breath and throw away the pills 'Cause it's a good day from mornin' til night A low-carb diet has cured me of GERD! Thanks to the work of Dr. Norm Robillard, author of Heartburn Cured, I no longer have acid reflux--and I don't have to avoid "trigger foods" like onions, caffeine, chocolate (in the form of baking cocoa), mint, tomatoes and fat. This is a big change from the Body-for-Life program I was on just a few months ago. Body-for-Life involves eating (among other things) six small servings of "authorized" carbs like whole-wheat bread, pasta, fruit, beans, brown rice and winter squash per day. Now I mostly eat meat, eggs, nuts and non-starchy vegetables like leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and green beans. Low-carb diets defy just about every official dietary guideline out there. How often do you hear "eat plenty of healthy whole...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog