Low Sugar, So Simple 100 Delicious Low-Sugar, Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Recipes for Eating Clean and Living Healthy

284 Pages·2017·22.25 MB·English

by  Elviira Krebber

ELVIIRA KREBBER
Creator of the Low-Carb, So Simple blog
Low Sugar, So Simple
100 Delicious Low-Sugar, Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Recipes for Eating Clean and
Living Healthy
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 The Sugar Crisis: How Sugar Harms Your Body
Chapter 2 Stealth Sugar: Sugar in Its Many Forms
Chapter 3 Cooking without Sugar: Healthy Alternatives to Sugar,
Starches, and Unhealthy Carbs
Chapter 4 Basics & Pantry Staples
Chapter 5 Breakfast
Chapter 6 Lunch
Chapter 7 Dinner
Chapter 8 Snacks
Chapter 9 Desserts
Chapter 10 Drinks
REFERENCES
RESOURCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
I used to be a real sugar addict. Thanks to my sweet tooth, I was overweight
throughout childhood, and I was bullied at school because of it. (I was even
heavier than the heaviest boys in the class!) My mom is an excellent cook, and
whenever I was around, her pies, cakes, and cookies disappeared as quickly as
she prepared them. When I knew she’d baked a delicious blueberry pie, I
couldn’t resist the temptation: I would cut one slice, then another, and another
until there wasn’t a crumb left! Inside, though, I was vulnerable and suffering
from the constant bullying. I so desperately wanted to be thin that I started to cut
calories drastically. Eventually I was diagnosed with anorexia.
After high school, though, I really lost control of my eating. I went back to
eating sugar, and things got even worse. When I was studying industrial design
close to the Arctic Circle, not a day would pass when I didn’t indulge in a
gigantic chocolate bar—and the endless darkness during the polar night
exacerbated my sugar cravings. So it was no wonder that I started suffering from
migraines and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). I devoured pizzas and pastas, and
poured copious amounts of sugar onto just about everything I ate. I bought
cakes, muffins, candies—anything sweet—and ate them all at once. I knew it
didn’t do me any good, but I couldn’t stop.
Later when I attended a language course in England, I enjoyed all the local
“delicacies.” My favorite was a super-supreme donut, a huge pastry filled with
vanilla custard and coated with chocolate glaze. I gulped it down cheerfully
along with a large chocolate milkshake. On the way home from school to my
host family, I grabbed some humbugs—a local sweet—plus some fudge, and
enjoyed them while walking. On my class trip to France, I bought a 14-ounce
(400 g) bar of Toblerone and ate it in a single day. On the last day of the course, I
celebrated by buying a huge carrot cake, which I divided with my roommate. (At
least I didn’t gobble it up all by myself, for a change!)
All that sugar made me feel miserable. Not only did I have physical ailments,
but I was also suffering from depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. I had
anorexia in my past, and now I developed another type of eating disorder:
bulimia. I was frightened to death of vomiting, so I popped laxative pills like
candies—dozens and dozens per day. Sitting in agony on the toilet didn’t bother
me much, as long as I got rid of the junk I’d eaten as quickly as possible.
Soon my condition worsened. I started suffering from unexplained stomach
pains. In 1999, my colon was removed, and for a year after that I felt wonderful.
However, the IBS symptoms came back, along with even worse pain. My weight
plummeted until my BMI was only 12.7. I had arrhythmia, terrible stomach
pains, and brain fog. No doctor could give me a diagnosis. The lab results all
came back fine, but I felt like I was dying.
So I had no other choice but to take control of my health. I started to study
nutrition, and soon I learned how destructive sugar is. I cut it out of my diet—
and cereals, too, because I’d heard lots of success stories from people who
regained their health by omitting gluten from their diets. (Little did I know at
that point that cereals were, in practice, sugar. If that comes as a surprise to you,
too, don’t worry: I’ll explain in the chapters that follow.)
As I quit sugar, I added more fat to my diet. It took a long time to understand
how vital fat is to health—natural fat, that is. My brain fog finally disappeared
after I started consuming butter and other natural fats.
NOTE TO THE READER
• All eggs used are U.S. size large, and should be organic and free-range whenever possible, because
these contain more omega-3 fats and other nutrients. (Plus, they taste better!)
• Be sure to use the freshest ingredients and those of the best quality. Organic, non-GMO vegetables are
best. As for meat and dairy products, choose those from animals fed with a species-specific diet. (For
example, choose dairy and beef products that come from grass-fed cows.)
• Milk and cream should be organic, if possible, and free from food additives.
• All citrus fruits (especially lemons) should be organic and unwaxed.
• Baking powder should be aluminum-free. Cinnamon should be Ceylon cinnamon, or true cinnamon—
not the more common cassia or Chinese cinnamon, which is toxic to the liver.
After I made these changes—quitting sugar and starch, and adding more fat to
my diet—I started getting better. Much, much better. My weight normalized, and
I was no longer bulimic; I suffered fewer migraines; and my anxiety and panic
attacks disappeared. I wasn’t depressed anymore. And my stomach finally felt
great! No more IBS, no more bloating; all that crippling pain had disappeared.
Now I enjoyed a flat tummy. I had six-pack abs without even trying. My entire
body composition was ripped and muscular in comparison to the way it looked
before. When I ate sugar—even when I wasn’t overweight—I had a flabby
stomach, enormous thighs, and a round face. Now my body looked toned and fit,
even though I didn’t do any sports.
With my new lifestyle, though, I noticed that it wasn’t easy to find truly
healthy recipes. In fact, most of the sugar-free recipes I came across didn’t seem
to be sugar-free at all. They contained dried fruit, syrups such as agave or rice
syrup, or starches. Many of them had artificial sweeteners, too. I’d found
healthy, sugar-free natural sweeteners myself, but couldn’t find recipes for them.
So I had to create everything from scratch. I developed recipes for breads,
desserts, breakfasts, main courses, side dishes, and more—all with a minimal
number of ingredients and steps, because I was busy and impatient.
Then in 2012, I established my Low-Carb, So Simple blog to help people in
the same situation as I was—seeking easy, healthy recipes after switching to a
low-sugar lifestyle. Five years later, I’m delighted to have more than 600,000
Facebook followers and hundreds of thousands of blog readers. There seems to
be a huge demand for easy, truly healthy low-sugar recipes, and this is very
understandable. With the current biased dietary guidelines and a food industry
that spends billions on marketing its junk, people are getting sick, both literally
and figuratively. They have to discover the truth behind these lies by themselves.
Like parrots, doctors and dietitians still adhere to the low-fat religion,
emphasizing the importance of “healthy” whole grains and fruit, not realizing
that these substances actually make people sick.
Today we’ve finally started to understand that fat is your friend while sugar is
the thing making you sick. Knowing that, we can move toward perfect health by
savoring delicious, natural, clean food without sugar and starch. This book will
show you how to do just that. Enjoy!
CHAPTER 1
THE SUGAR CRISIS
How Sugar Harms Your Body
Sugar is everywhere. Our diets are filled with it. Yet few people realize how harmful
this extremely common ingredient is, and how damaging it is to our long-term health.
Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) advises cutting sugar intake to a
maximum of 25 grams a day, we often exceed this recommendation by more than
three times: The average American consumes 76 grams of sugar per day.
Those of us who want to get off the sugar roller coaster find it nearly
impossible. Sugar turns up everywhere: in our morning lattes; in our “healthy”
breakfasts of yogurt and granola; in the cookies we snack on; and in our dinners
of pasta with a side of bread. Sugar hides on our plates in plain sight.
Why Reducing Sugar Consumption Is More Important than Ever
Many modern diseases are caused or greatly exacerbated by too much sugar. We
inundate our bodies with too much food-driven glucose, and consequently, our
pancreases are exhausted and compromised from pumping out massive amounts
of insulin to compensate for it. We also eat more frequently than ever before,
which contributes to perpetually high blood sugar levels. It’s a perfect storm that
sets us up for a host of ills, from tooth decay to insulin resistance to metabolic
syndrome and obesity. Even certain types of cancers and cardiovascular disease
are linked to sugar overconsumption.
Obesity rates are the highest they have ever been—and they continue to
increase. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
2009–2010, two-thirds of the American population is considered overweight or
obese. Today that figure is even higher. Nearly 30 percent of the world’s
population is obese, with the highest proportion residing in the United States,
China, and India, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
The most distressing statistic is that obesity has increased in children and
adolescent populations worldwide—more evidence that our sugar-laden diets are
making us fat, sick, and tired, and are setting up the next generation for more of
the same.
Our diets of sugar, starch, and refined-carbohydrate have created a veritable
epidemic of type 2 diabetes because our bodies simply can’t manage the burden
of consistently high blood sugar levels. If current trends continue, the future
doesn’t look any brighter. The U.S. government estimates that 40 percent of
Americans will develop diabetes at some point in their lives, while the
International Diabetes Foundation projects that the worldwide incidence of
diabetes is set to explode: It estimates that by 2040, more than 600 million
people worldwide will have diabetes—a huge increase from the 2015 estimate of
415 million.
The price of our sugar-filled diets is expensive, and not just at the grocery
checkout. Treating the diseases that stem from sugar overconsumption is very
costly. Managing diabetes cost $245 billion in the year 2012 alone, according to
the American Diabetes Association. This is a staggering statistic, considering
that type 2 diabetes is solely caused—and is largely reversible—by lifestyle
factors such as diet.
The Difference between Contemporary and Traditional Diets
At no time in history has the majority of the world’s population been as
inundated with access to food as we are today. Even as recently as one hundred
years ago, consistently eating three meals a day was a luxury for much of the
general population. Sugar was expensive, so it was enjoyed sparingly. Now the
democratization of food, particularly sugar-laden foods, has made people fatter
and sicker. This is true worldwide. Where people have given up their traditional
diets in exchange for cheap, sugary, readily available processed food, health
issues such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease prevail. But how does
our contemporary diet differ from the traditional diets of our grandparents, and
why is our current pattern of eating so harmful?
One of the most striking differences between contemporary and traditional
diets is—you guessed it—the amount of sugar we eat. During the past two
centuries, our sugar consumption has skyrocketed. Americans consumed 129
pounds (59 kg) of added caloric sweeteners per capita in 2015, according to the
U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service. Refined
sugars consisted of 69 pounds (31 kg) of that amount. These added sweeteners,
combined with high-carb intake from natural sources such as starch and fruits,
increases the total amount of sugar consumed per person to sky-high levels. In
comparison, according to the Kolp Institute, in the year 1770, the average
American consumed only 4 pounds (1.8 kg) of sugar. See how much things have
changed?
Not only do we regularly consume sweetened sodas and add sugar to our
food, but the food industry also engineers common foods with sugar and sugar
derivatives. Sugar lurks in everything, from condiments to soup to salad
dressing. Fructose was once a rare type of sugar, occurring only in fruits and, in
small amounts, certain vegetables. However, these days the food industry loves
to add fructose to almost everything. Our food—sweet and savory alike—is
saturated with different fructose-based syrups, particularly high-fructose corn
syrup (HFCS).
As if this weren’t bad enough, starch, which is also a form of sugar, makes up
the majority of our diets. We start our mornings with sugary cereals, devour
deep-dish pan pizza for lunch, and then consume plates of pasta with a side of
crusty bread for dinner. Or we try to take the “healthier” route of fruit and
oatmeal for breakfast, salad with a side of whole grain bread and a fresh-pressed
juice for lunch, and some lean protein with a huge serving of brown rice for
dinner. We congratulate ourselves for eating healthily, not realizing that such
meals still contain massive amounts of sugar and sugarlike substances that our
bodies can’t handle.
The Role of the Food Industry in Promoting Sugar
Demonizing real food and promoting processed food as healthy and convenient
has been the agenda of the food industry for several decades. It told us that butter
and other natural fats humans have consumed for thousands of years were
harmful, and would make us fat, and cause high cholesterol and cardiovascular
disease. Naturally the food industry had a way to save us from these “unhealthy”
saturated fats: low-fat, high-sugar products. But here’s why those products aren’t
a solution: Humans evolved eating fat. When food lacks fat, we don’t find it
palatable. Fat gives food its appealing taste and texture, and it also triggers our
body’s natural satiety mechanisms, which let us know when we are full. Without
it, the food industry had to heap on sugars, starches, and other additives to
improve the taste and consistency of food. It was a cheap option that enabled the
industry to mass-produce food with a long shelf life at a high profit.
Dietary guidelines have been around for almost a hundred years, but contrary
to their original intent, our eating habits haven’t improved, and we have not
become healthier. In fact, we are sicker than ever. Although lifespans have
increased, so has the incidence of chronic illnesses such as obesity, diabetes,
cancer, and cardiovascular disease, which are directly correlated with poor diet
and lifestyle choices. We may be living longer, but we are sick, fat, and