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Confusion about sweetners?

M

madfish69

Active Member
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36
Hi,

I'm kind of doing the low carb diet and seems to work the best for me. Although I'm not super strict, but do the best I can.

Anyway, I have a few questions about desserts:

1. I have found some low carb dessert recipes...are those ok for me to eat?

2. I don't follow the whole sweetner deal. Is there a safe and good sweetner in the UK? I'm not really interested in the sweetner for tea/coffee...I'm talking about to make low carb desserts? I see things like Stevia extract used in several recipes...is that cool for us type 2 diabetics?

I guess my overall question is actually this. When you try and follow the low carb/ Dr.Bernstein philosophy....are there options we have where we can make desserts?? **** I'm getting tired of not eating sweets!!! I've seen recipes of chocolate mousse that only has 4g of carbs per portion and use sweetner like stevia extract or whatever. I'm confused.

I looked on the Tesco website and found a gazzilion sweetners...I know for sure some of them are not good for us for one complicated reason or another....but I know there are some which are ok for us.

The problem is a lot of the things I find for recipes...even in Bernsteins books etc they keep using things which we either don't have in UK or I don't know what the equivalent is for us. Like he uses DaVinci's syrups and recommends them as the safe stuff...but what the heck is that? I've never seen Davinci stuff here.

Living my life depriving my sweet tooth is too depressing.

If anyone here knows of a good website or resource that genuinely has dessert recipes that are "actually" suitable for us....not marketing con's masquerading as "diabetic foods"...I'd be very grateful.

Man, I'm asking Santa for a new pancreas next Xmas.
 
Madfish,

You're already on the best site ever for what you need!

Have a look at the Low Carb recipes thread and another thread called Chocolate Paradise. WhitbyJet has posted lots of lovely sweet things, all tried and tested. We've found the ice cream recipes are really good for a sweet treat hit - I've made ours in tiny 3oz pots. That doesn't sound a lot, especially to an ice cream addict like me, but they are incredibly filling and rich so you get your fix quickly. You don't need to be a gourmet cook either!

I have a collection of sweeteners but I try to avoid any sweeteners that are aspartame or saccharin. I use xylitol or erythritol, or sucralose based sweeteners such as Splenda. I find Splenda/Candarel type sweeteners incredibly sweet so if they are listed in a recipe I automatically half the amount and, usually, that's still too sweet. Stevia is quite good, I have the zero carb variety for coffee, but I'm still getting used to using it as you need miniscule amounts and I'm a bit heavy-handed.

Ju
 
Thanks "Sweetheart" :) I presume you must be a member of the fairer sex with a handle like that :)

Awesome resource, the chocolate paradise!! I do have one question...when these recipes include " dark chocolate" 70% ...etc what does that mean? Isn't chocolate loaded with ummm sugar? I don't get it?

There's this orange truffles recipe I found...on the thread...and it says 200g dark chocolate (at least 70%) and then add sweetner like splenda etc etc...I don't understand how we as low carb diabetics get to use chocolate even if its dark choc. Isn't that bad for us?

Thanks :)
 
I use canderel powder for sweetening desserts and treats. I make a really good ice cream, 4 grams carbs per ramikin, even allowing for the carbs in the fresh raspberries and strawberries u use. I make "almost bounties" from Whitbyjet's recipe. I use normal powder for cold recipes, and the yellow canderel for cooking as it tolerates high heat.
 
madfish69 said:
Thanks "Sweetheart" :) I presume you must be a member of the fairer sex with a handle like that :)

Awesome resource, the chocolate paradise!! I do have one question...when these recipes include " dark chocolate" 70% ...etc what does that mean? Isn't chocolate loaded with ummm sugar? I don't get it?

There's this orange truffles recipe I found...on the thread...and it says 200g dark chocolate (at least 70%) and then add sweetner like splenda etc etc...I don't understand how we as low carb diabetics get to use chocolate even if its dark choc. Isn't that bad for us?

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

Milk chocolate has 50 to 60 grams of carbs per 100 grams. All of which us sugar. The darker the chocolate, the less carbs. I have some 85% choc by Lindt I get at sainsburys which is only 19 grams per 100. The %age number refers to the amount of cocoa in the chocolate. A few squares of dark choc is ok for most of us - but try it and test!
 
madfish69 said:
Thanks "Sweetheart" :) I presume you must be a member of the fairer sex with a handle like that :)

Awesome resource, the chocolate paradise!! I do have one question...when these recipes include " dark chocolate" 70% ...etc what does that mean? Isn't chocolate loaded with ummm sugar? I don't get it?

There's this orange truffles recipe I found...on the thread...and it says 200g dark chocolate (at least 70%) and then add sweetner like splenda etc etc...I don't understand how we as low carb diabetics get to use chocolate even if its dark choc. Isn't that bad for us?

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

If you search for the Rich Chocolate Mousse Recipe, you can see Defren's working out of the carbs in chocolate....like Grazer said, the higher the cocoa solids content the better it is. With a lot of the recipes the chocolate is in recipes containing ground almonds or flax seed meal, which makes it slower to get into your system as sugar - not hugely slower but it all helps. you can get chocolate that is 90% or more cocoa. Lidl and Aldi sell some of the best dark chocolates going.

If you think your sweet cravings are bad, spare a thought my husband - a chocolatier. He hasn't been near our chocolate making room since his February diagnosis. Last night he mentioned selling our equipment, but I've persuaded him to wait for a while. Little steps....

PS, Yes I'm definitely all girl.... :D
 
Oh no...he's a chocolatier!!!!!!! That's such a cool job...and **** cruel to get diabetes.

I have yet another follow up question...if the desserts we make are so low in carbs and use sweetners...can we eat those desserts with uummm freedom? :) I obviously don't mean just going nuts having 4 whole brownies or whatever....but can we have it like a normal person eats desserts? Or inspite of the low carbs and sweetner made desserts...do we still have to kind of limit a brownie or a chocolate orange truffle (my mouth's watering....I need a coaster for my lower lip lol) like once a week or whatever.

Can we be a bit relaxed with these low carb desserts or still have to be rather strict.

Thanks :)

P.S. What town is your hubby a chocolatier in? London?
 
If you're counting carbs seriously, I don't think you'd eat too many treats in one day even if they were 3 or 4 carbs each. Also, although you do need to eat fat if you're low carbing too much has got to be bad for you. So, in theory, carb wise, I could eat maybe four of my icecream pots a day (about 12g carbs) I wouldn't because I'm still wary of too much fat. I might go for two on a bad cravings day....

The other thing about low carbing is that you do lose your sweet tooth. Over Easter I got the chocolate temperer out to make big bars of chocolate for our kids. I test a spoonful of chocolate every so often to check the temper. When one blob had set I popped it in my mouth...omg...bleurrgghhh. It was so cloying and incredibly sweet! Can't have been more than a teaspoon of milk chocolate, but boy did I regret that. Had to get a drink of water pretty quick.

If you're having problems defying bad cravings you could start taking a supplement such as Gymnema Sylvestre or Banaba. It will also help your BG levels go down. There's some info here;

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=27056&hilit=gymnema&start=75

MH used to sell chocolate at fairs and online. I think that may have gone by the wayside for the immediate future.

Ju
 
Hey Madfish!

Not much to add to what the others have said, except if you want the deVinci Sugar-free syrups, you can find them on the Low-carb Megastore on-line. (Just google it and you'll find it). They're £6.25 (+ postage) for a large bottle and come in lots of different flavours. They're sweetened with sucralose (the ingredient that Splenda's made of) and they're pretty good at flavouring and sweetning ice-cream without adding any carbs. Most other sweetners have got some carb in e.g. splenda has fillers mixed with the sucralose, sugar alcohols such as Xylitol, Maltitol etc are carb-based - although I think most Type 2s get away with them (I'm LADA and they spike me).

Anyway, good luck with the food experiments!

Smidge
 
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