d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-DONUTS! A story of failure, and a new hope.

Yes, donuts. The silly season is past (or is it? Does New Years day count? When is the official end??) and the White Christmas and Peanut Brittle are gone. The former we ate some of and the rest got chucked after Mum and Dad left and the rice puffs went a little soggy (after storing well for a week in the fridge). The latter we ate all of. Oops.

My story begins yesterday as I was doing the shopping. As always at my local shopping centre I walk past the Donut King. As usual, I stop to get a latte there. The donuts smell nice. That cinnamon-y donut-y smell. When I ask for my coffee with no sugar, the girl who is serving misunderstands and asks if I want donuts without sugar. Well yes, I would, but I know she just means the cinnamon sugar that is dusted on, I doubt they will make me up some sugar free batter. But an idea is spawned then and there, as I sipped my latte: sugar free donuts. I have to give it a go.

I've never made donuts, and truthfully I don't think I have ever deep fried anything. I don't own a deep fryer but I do own a sturdy saucepan, a candy/deep frying thermometer and a willing heart. So I arrived home with a car full of shopping and a head full of donut dreams. I needed to research a) donut recipes (preferably easy) and b) the best oils/fats for deep frying. The recipe was simple, there are a plethora of simple recipes for what are claimed to be donuts; the oil slightly less so because of the ongoing controversy about saturated vs unsaturated fats. I don't fear a saturate or two so I chose lard for my deep frying needs, mainly because it has a high smoke point, it is solid at room temperature (a must for donuts, otherwise they seep oil and get soggy) and a website by a US Donut Bakery where they stated that they used only the finest quality lard because of the importance of the 'mouth feel' of the donut. Well mouth feel is important to me as to any donut consumer, so lard it would be. Also, I knew I could buy it at the supermarket. I ignored internet posts suggesting that supermarket lard is inferior and I should get high quality lard from a farmers market. Some people have no idea about spontenaity.

Once the lard was in hand (actually, in fridge), I started the dough. The recipe is here. I didn't modify it other than to halve the recipe (not an easy proposition when the full recipe calls for one egg) and to use 1 tablespoon of dextrose instead of 75g sugar. I felt that I didn't want my donuts to be all that sweet, but I planned to cover them in a mixture of dextrose and cinnamon to get that true donut taste. Oh foolish mortal.

As soon as I started making the dough, I had my doubts. As I said, I have not made donuts before, but I have made scones before. This is pretty darn similar to a scone recipe, I thought to myself, except for the half an egg. Would this really make a delicious, fluffy treat once treated with lard?

Look, I won't tease you any longer. The answer is no.

I pretty much made deep fried scones. Even covered in dextrose and cinnamon, they were...not nice. Then there was the smell of the now-bubbling lard. I had read that lard is beef fat (plus some gross things about which part of the cow it was from, especially from those who visit farmers markets for their lard) so I was expecting some smell. The lard I used was clearly, clearly pig fat. I mean clearly. My nose does not lie. I love crackling as much as the next person (who loves crackling), but there is a point a gal reaches when standing over a bubbling pot of pig fat watching a deep fried scone float to the surface when it just becomes a bit overpowering. And I had to keep monitoring the temperature of the oil, taking it on and off the heat (carefully so as not to start a house fire/ set off smoke alarms and wake my son). And despite my best efforts, the dough was not magically turning to donut.

This was not going to happen, clearly. I turned off the stove and walked away (after carefully removing the pot from the hot element). Both the cooked and uncooked 'sconuts' went in the bin. May they rest in peace.

But I'm not beaten yet. There are other donut recipes to try, ones that actually might produce a donut-type product, with or without sugar. There are deep fryers to purchase or (more likely) borrow. There are other oils to fry foods in. With you as my witness, dear reader, someday I will eat a donut again, and it will be sugar free. And it will not smell like pig fat or taste like a crispy scone. But excuse me if it is not soon, I think deep frying and I need some time apart.

In the meanwhile, there are always Donut Muffins. My wonderful friend Betsi (a fellow blogspot-ee) posted a recipe ages ago for these, which she called Doughnut Muffins. I'm not going to quibble with her spelling as I'm about to steal her recipe (although I note that DK chooses my spelling...look, I'll be honest, I was faced with a decision and went with donut as easier to type, ok?).

Following the digital trail backwards across blogs, the original recipe is here. I've made two modifications to the recipe. One is substituting butter for the oil. I hate cooking cakes or muffins with oil, I much prefer to cook with butter, and a quick internet search told me this was possible with baked products such as muffins (but not with other products such as choux pastry- which I could care less about). And the other was obviously using dextrose instead of sugar. I used 1/2 cup dextrose instead of 3/4 cup sugar. This was partly to account for the fact that both dextrose and butter exude water when heated, unlike oil and sugar, so I didn't want there to be too much dextrose in there. To be honest, I'm not sure if my success was helped by this decision or if it wouldn't have made a lick of difference.

But here it is. It's not a donut, but it's a deliciously donut-y muffin.

Delicious Dextrose Donut Muffins

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cup flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
75g butter (1/3 cup)- melted
1/2 cup dextrose
1 egg
3/4 cup milk

Delicious coating:

1/2 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup dextrose combined with 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180 C and grease a muffin tin. Combine dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon) in one bowl and wet ingredients (melted butter, sugar, egg and milk) in a larger one. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir to combine.

A little side note here. Muffins can go from deliciously moist and fluffy to deadweight in the blink of an eye. The trick, apparently is minimal stirring, just until the flour has been moistened. Ignore the fact that it is still lumpy. Really, ignore it. And lo, you shall make great muffins. You heard it here, folks. (And I heard it here).

Spoon the batter into the muffin tin. Another tip: apparently you are not supposed to fill them all the way up; aim for about 2/3 full in order to let them blossom into lovely domed muffins.  I sound like I know what I am doing, don't I? But really I got this from here again. Cook the muffins for 15-20 minutes.

Once done (check with a skewer), tip them out while still hot. Dip each one in melted butter, then in the combined dextrose and cinnamon mixture. Allow to cool on a wire rack.


Prepare for deliciousness :)

I bought out the good china for this little wonder.

I decided to do the topping on only what I was prepared to eat immediately, and put the rest of the batch in the freezer. I think (hope) I can simply reheat one at a time when the mood strikes and dip in melted butter and dextrose/cinnamon and enjoy.

Happy 2012 everyone. For those sugar free- may it be a sweet year anyway!

Fructose free peanut brittle recipe

This recipe is not for the faint of heart, the weak of teeth or the allergic of peanuts. It's also a bit of a marathon to make, which isn't to say it's not easy, it's just not quick. Mine took several hours (yep hours) to cook, and you need to stay by the stove pretty much the whole time (although you can do other things between stirring: fold washing, unstack dishwasher, make White Christmas slice, write blog, etc). But the results are well worth it if you are a peanut brittle fan like me.

You'll do best with a candy thermometer for this one. Believe me.


Ok, here we go. The original recipe is here (for those who stumbled onto this page looking for peanut brittle a la normale)

Fructose Free Peanut Brittle 
2 cups dextrose powder
1 cup glucose syrup
1/2 cup water
240g butter (yep, that's nearly a whole stick of butter)- cut into smaller pieces
2 cups peanuts- raw, roasted, salted, whatever you like. I used Nobbys salted peanuts chopped roughly
1 tsp. baking soda- if your baking soda is anything like mine it will be full of lumps, so I suggest you pre measure and press all the lumps out using a fork, as getting a lump of un-mixed soda in your peanut brittle is an unhappy surprise.

(Note: the above makes a LOT of peanut brittle. When I've made this recipe in the past I have halved the recipe and it works just fine- in fact, from memory, it took a lot less time to cook. Today I made the full recipe without thinking, so luckily mum and dad will be here for Christmas to help me eat it all up).



Method:

Combine dextrose, glucose syrup and water in a saucepan. Cook on a moderate heat (stirring) until the mixture goes from opaque white to almost clear, as pictured. 

Starts white...

Goes nearly clear- that's science for ya!

Let it come to a boil. When it boils, add the butter and keep stirring. It will look a bit funny- like the butter is not mixing in properly. Don't worry about this. Stir some more. This recipe is nearly all about stirring, sorry.

Buttery goodness

So, stir until the butter has melted in and then keep stirring until the mixture boils again. Keep it at a moderate boil. The mixture is now hitting what I call the toddler stage- you can leave it alone for about a minute or so, but don't think that it is independent. Oh no. It still needs lots of your attention. I would say stir fairly frequently at this stage. Use your candy thermometer to check it and once it reaches 230 degrees F (this will feel like forever), change from fairly frequently to frequently. So, not quite constantly. Between stirs you can go tend to that washing, or feed your real toddler, or send me a message below telling me how much you like this recipe (except of course you haven't finished it yet. So, save that for later)

The mixture will darken as it cooks- here are some pictures to entertain you while you stir (I'm presuming you have a laptop while you make this, you see).

Caramelly goodness

Slightly darker caramelly goodness (several hours later- felt like anyway)

Add peanuts when the temperature reaches soft crack stage (280 degrees F). Now you have to change from stirring frequently to- you guessed it- constantly. (To be honest, I just kept with frequently- I'm a rebel like that).

Nut much further to go! Get it?

Keep with your constant stirring until temperature reaches hard crack stage (305 degrees F). Take it off the heat immediately, and stir in your lump-free baking soda, mixing it thoroughly. Pour onto 2 cookie sheets or baking trays- greased or lined with baking paper. You can't spread it once you pour it, but if it's too thick, as the brittle cools, you can stretch it thinner by lifting and pulling from the edges. 

Once it cools you can break it into pieces. If you have such thing as a toffee hammer, then go ahead and use it now. Lord knows you are never going to use it otherwise.

The finished product- the full recipe makes twice this amount.
Yep, I have only photographed half of it for you. I'm lazy like that.

And that's it. If you have any questions, post them below.

I'm dreaming of a...

...fructose-free white Christmas slice!

Oh yes, Christmas time is upon us and this is the time of year to apply the old 'party foods are for [Christmas] parties' advice from Sweet Poison. I don't know why I wanted to try to make White Christmas slice- it's not a traditional treat in our family, but for some reason I always think fondly and slightly yearningly of it around this time of the year. Because it's full of fat (yum, Copha) I haven't made White Christmas for years. I'd toy with the idea of making some, realise that I would only eat far too much of it and turn into a White Christmas-fuelled blimp, and abandon the whole idea. 'If only I could make a low fat White Christmas slice' I would deludedly think to myself whilst chowing down on some of mum's delicious Christmas fruit cake (at a thousand billion calories per slice).

Anyhow,  those crazy days of dieting are behind me, and I'm sticking to the simple plan of eating anything I want minus sugar (specifically fructose). I've lost over 13 kilos, and I'm not afraid of over-indulging because my stomach is now talking to my brain and telling it when to STOP (it speaks in capitals now). So, when mum and I were planning the Christmas menu this year, I said I would make White Christmas as a bit of a treat, and I planned to do it fructose-free.

When turning this plan into reality, I hit a few snags immediately. For those familiar with the slice, besides the Copha it is mostly made of a) sugar, b) rice bubbles, and c) dried fruit. The sugar is no problem- with a few adjustments I can make it with dextrose instead of sugar which has fructuse and glucose. Rice bubbles are out because they are nearly 10% sugar (nearly all of it added), but I have been eating a cereal which is pure puffed brown rice (nothing else added), so I decided this would make a good substitute for rice bubbles.  Simple so far.

But Sweet Poisonites (Poisoners? No, Poisonites) will know that dried fruit is a no no if you want to keep your fructose intake as low as possible. A piece of real fruit will a) contain fructose, b) contain fibre which counteracts what the fructose does in the body, and c) contain enough water to be bulky and fill you up, limiting the amount that you can eat in one go. Dried fruit does the first two, but doesn't fill you up, so you get a bunch of sugar in just a handful of sultanas. The recipe that I worked from had 1/2 cup (80g) of dried fruit- which is about 27g of fructose. Holy crap.

Looks so innocent...

I've avoided dried fruit altogether since starting sugar free, and it's not been a problem. But could I avoid it in White Christmas? Well, it is kind of integral to the slice...so, I decided that, since it's the season to be jolly and all that, I would make the White Christmas low in fructose, with limited dried fruit, diced finely to get the most out of it, dextrose instead of sugar, and rice puffs. As the slice is very rich, it's not difficult to limit yourself to a very small slice, which would mean very very little dried fruit per serve.

That was my first thought. My second thought (which came to me only as I was finishing up the low fructose version) was that this slice would taste pretty good even without the dried fruit. It has coconut and powdered milk as well as the rice puffs, and these make up the bulk of the taste. If I left out the fruit, I could therefore make a no fructose version as well. So, I did both, and here are the recipes for y'all. The no fructose one is first, the low fructose one (with the dried fruit included) is second- there are slightly different quantities to each recipe as I was experimenting a little.



No fructose White Christmas slice
1/2 cup dextrose
1/2 cup powdered milk
1.5 cups puffed rice mine are from the 'health foods' aisle of Coles and are 100% brown rice (puffed). Anything similar will probably work.
1 and 1/3 cups coconut
150g copha


Mix all dried ingredients together.  Melt copha on the stove until it is a clear liquid and then pour over the dry ingredients. Mix together well and press into a foil-lined dish or molds. Put in the fridge for a couple of hours and voila!

Low fructose White Christmas slice
1 & 1/4 cups Rice Puffs
1/2 cup full cream milk powder
1/2 cup dextrose to be honest, you could probably use a bit less- the dried fruit adds quite a bit of sweetness
1/4 cup dried fruit- I used just sultanas and dried apricots, chopped finely to give maximum value with minimum fruit
155g copha

As above, mix the dry ingredients first, add the melted copha. Press into foil-lined dish or mold- a Christmassy one if you've got it- and refrigerate.

I just happened to have a silicone mold with little Christmas trees- tis the season for making tree-shaped food.

And here are the beautiful results:

A trio of  White Christmasses- the trees are low fructose, the squares are no fructose, the hearts are a la normale (for my husband)

A note on Copha- this stuff is sold oil- hydrogenated coconut oil to be exact. They say (pure) coconut oil is incredibly good for us (if you ignore all the nay-sayers who are stuck in the 'saturated fats will kill you quicker than crack' mindset), but the word 'hydrogenated' should alert you to the fact that this stuff is a) way cheaper than pure coconut oil (being a processed, cheaper product) and b) nowhere near as good for you (and potentially quite bad for you). To be honest, if I had pure coconut oil available, I would have tried that instead but alas, I did not. So, keeping in mind that this is a one-off treat (at least for me), I stuck to the Copha. If you happen to try the above with something else instead of the Copha (e.g., pure coconut oil) then please post below to let us know how it went. I imagine it would work fine but perhaps be very very coconutty.

So that's it. Christmas conquered. Well, I also made some peanut brittle- but I'll post the recipe for that seperately- it's a bit of a marathon.

Have a lovely Christmas and New Year everyone, and a big shout out to those doing it sugar free for the first time this year- may it be merry and bright without the need for a sugar high!

What the Iranians can teach us about fructose

Aaah the old 'sorry I've not blogged for ages' blog post. I've been on limited internet for a while due to the whole packing-moving-unpacking thing. And to be honest, I've also felt like I don't have anything new to share. Maybe writing about going sugar-free isn't blog worthy. I mean, it seemed like such a big step, a topic which would keep me writing for ages. But turns out that, once past the initial withdrawal and so on, and after trying a few recipes and finding that glucose is nearly as easy to work with as sucrose, it's not such a big deal. It's actually really easy. I've lost nearly 8kg so far, and it keeps going slowly down.

But then again, I do love to write, and so I find myself back here. I was inspired tonight by a study which David Gillespie posted to the Sweet Poison Facebook group. The original study is here. In a nutshell this study showed that high levels of fructose in the diet of men and women in Tehran, Iran was associated with an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, including higher body mass index and abdominal obesity.

Yeah, so? you might be saying. Isn't that the point of this blog, that fructose is bad, bad, bad, and that there is research to prove it? Well, yes, of course. But remember that most of the previous published research in this field has been in rats. And it's easy to dismiss this- a rat is (by definition) not a human. And while there have been other studies on people which showed that the rats were on the right track, they were limited, and open to criticism, for example that they fed people an unrealistic amount of fructose. A 2010 review of research published in the same journal as the new one concluded that "No fully relevant data account for a direct link between moderate dietary fructose intake and health risk markers".

So what we have now is one of the first human (ie, non rat) studies to show strong links between dietary fructose (the fructose that actual humans actually ate as part of their actual normal everyday diet) and metabolic syndrome, independent of age, physical activity, energy intake, dietary intake of other nutrients (eg fat) and BMI (all of which the researchers controlled for in their analysis).

The levels of fructose that this study suggest leads to problems seem quite high: >50g per day. At first glance it may seem like most of us are ok- surely I don't eat more than 50g fructose (100g sucrose), you might say. That's a heck of a lot of sugar. Visualise 22 teaspoons if you can, because that's how much it is. But consider that the average intake of fructose in this study was around 50g. So around half those studied (normal, everyday people) were eating over 50g per day. In their usual diet. And in case you think this only applies to Tehranian Iranians, US figures suggest that on average, Americans eat 55g of fructose per day- again, meaning that around half eat more than this. The data for Aussies is sketchy. In 1995 an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey showed that 20% of Australian energy intake came from sugar (in processed foods, fruit and veg, honey and other sweeteners). 20% of energy intake for a male aged 31-50 is between 104g and 185g per day (in fructose terms, 52-92.5g per day). More current figures are sparse to nonexistent because the ABS no longer conducts this particular survey, but a study being conducted with staff at the Epworth hospital (the SWEET study) may provide more answers (if and when it is published- will be looking out for that one). Preliminary data collected from participants showed that they ate 17 teaspoons per day in added sugars alone. Add in your fruit and veg (these are counted in the fructose total, even if they are healthy!) and I'll bet we are close to averaging the magic (in a bad way) 22 teaspoons.

I can't help but feel that this new study means that David Gillespie and others sounding the warning on fructose like Dr Robert Lustig should take some time out this week to give themselves a little pat on the back and maybe just send a little 'told you so' email to the nay-sayers who have insisted that fructose is fine and dandy like sugar candy. Like the university professors interviewed for this article reassuring the public that sugar is no threat, and that the National Health and Medical Research Council draft nutrition guidelines are being ridiculous for daring to suggest that Australians limit added sugars.

The bottom line is that we (most of us) eat a LOT of sugar. And we can now be more confident that this sugar may be doing us, the humans, and not just the rats, a lot of harm. 

Fructose free must-haves

In general, creating fructose free meals is pretty easy. It’s just a matter of checking food labels carefully, even on things like, say, canned tomatoes, pizza bases and pita bread, things which reason says should not have sugar but which the manufacturers, in their wisdom, have poured a couple of spoonfuls into. The good news is that for many things, you can find a brand that offers the product without the sugar. And voila, fructose free dinner is served.

There are some particular things which I've found handy to have around now that I'm avoiding fructose. Some of these are to replace sugar, and some are to replace the snacks/treats I used to eat. So, today I wanted to share my top cupboard must-haves for fructose-free eating. 

Rice malt syrup

This fructose free syrup is a little like honey in consistency, and doesn’t taste like rice at all- hurray! I use it on toast sometimes, or even on Weetbix instead of honey. 

Fructose-free milo

This is an amazing recipe recreation by The Colonel over at the Sweet Poison forum. It was a cinch to make once I sourced the ingredients, and I made a big old container full ready for a lovely hot drink whenever the mood strikes. Delicious and completely fructose free. Thanks Colonel!

Dextrose and glucose syrup

These are the sugar-substitute staples for fructose free baking. I’ve used these for chocolate, coconut cake and caramels so far, and there are more to come. But if you can’t be bothered waiting for me to experiment with treats you can check out the Sweet Poison forum for recipe ideas.  For those from the USA, you might want to check out nofructose.org where Bill is experimenting with fructose-free recipes using US ingredients.

Citric acid

This is a bit of an odd one, but lately I’ve found that I love a glass of water with just a sprinkle of citric acid in it- a bit like having a slice of lemon in water. It adds just a bit of sourness, as if I’m having a cordial drink but without the sweetness. With my tastebuds now unused to much sweetness, I really like the sourness. I don’t think it would be wise to overdose on this, since it is an acid and might do strange things to the tummy, but since I don’t drink soft drinks, juice or cordial anymore, it makes a nice change from plain water. You could easily add a sprinkle of dextrose as well to make it more like a lemon-y cordial.

Peanut butter

I’ve always loved peanut butter but I used to use it very rarely because of the fat. I would use jam- ie, fruit boiled with sugar- in preference to peanut butter. Now I’m making friends with fat and enjoying the delicious creaminess of smooth peanut butter (no added sugar variety, obviously).

Smiths Crinkle Cut Cheese and Onion chips

Flavourings in chips, savoury snack biscuits and so on are usually a sugar minefield, so at first I was limited to plain potato chips if I wanted a snack. I quickly got bored of these and scanned the flavoured chips in desperation. Surely I could find one without sugar?? Nope, no good. Until I looked more closely at the Cheese and Onion flavoured Smiths Crinkle Cut Chips. The ingredients list includes dextrose but no other sugars. And dextrose is just glucose, so it’s fine from a fructose perspective. And as luck would have it, cheese and onion is one of my favourite flavours. So, huzzah!

Of course over-indulging on any of the above will send me back to my now-abandoned fat pants, but the good thing is that without the fructose, I don’t over-indulge. Huzzah again! 

It’s always good to get new things to add to the repertoire, so I’d love to hear from you- what are your favourite fructose free finds or cupboard staples?

Organic III: the final chapter

When I finished my last organic post (before a short caramel detour, and a short forced hiatus due to illness) I felt like I was well and truly falling down the rabbit hole, holding a can of worms and heading towards a box marked ‘PANDORA’ in big letters. I also felt a little confused, and not just by the number of mixed metaphors I was using. Once you start questioning your food (well, not literally) you find out all sorts of unpalatable truths (pun: hilarious) about pesticides and hormones and so on. I can’t look at what I eat and drink in the same way anymore. For example, it’s a relief to know that Australian chickens don’t have added hormones and are pretty antibiotic free, but if they are fed on grain which is sprayed with the old bug-be-gone, then my chicken pesto may be chicken pesticido. Is anything safe?? But then there's no evidence that these pesticides do anything bad to me...so....???

I’ll admit that I hoped the answer to 'should I go organic?' would be something like ‘ sure, go organic if you want to, but, hey, no problemo if you don’t feel like it or can’t afford it’.  But no. It had to be more complicated than that. Damn you organic food *shakes fist*. By the way, this is a picture of the 'organic section' of my local supermarket which illustrates why I'm not touching on the 'organic is better for the environment' argument in this series. It's just...yeah.

The only sure way to keep the pesticides off is to wrap the food in plastic.

But I do still need to know whether the claims of the organic food industry- that organic food tastes better and is it better for you than regular food- are true. Here are a few random samples:

Organic produce is better for you and more nutritious. Many people say that organic food tastes "as it used to", remember when we were kids? Research has shown that organic food has more vitamins, antioxidants and nutrients. Organic Angels (Australia) [Emphasis theirs] 

Flavor is another benefit of healthy plants growing in a living soil. Flavor results from a mixture of many different and complex molecules. Healthy, living soil provides a constant and more complex mixture of these molecules, which results in more flavor. Maine Organic Farmers and Gardiner’s Association   

The claims of other organic groups are similar, and many state that these claims are backed by 'research' (without citing specific research) which makes it sound legit and not just a hard sell from an industry asking you to pay 33% more for their goods. Well, call me cynical but I’m not going to take their word for it. Here’s what I found out.

In 2007 there was a huge media storm in the UK (and internationally) over the nutritional value of organic food after a large UK organic research facility (funded by Tesco, the largest seller of organic food in the UK) reported that their organically grown food was up to 40% higher in nutrients than conventional food grown at the same time. Newspapers went wild. The organic associations demanded that the government’s food standards agency ‘admit’ that organic food was superior. But when the data were actually examined, the findings were less exciting. Yes, the organic peaches grown in 2004 had 40% higher phenolics (which may have antiviral and anti-inflammatory health benefits) than conventional peaches, for example. But then the conventional peaches grown in 2005 had 30% higher phenolics than the organic peaches. This is just one example of the inconsistent findings which have plagued research in this area. There are some ‘trends’, but no firm conclusions about the nutritional superiority of organic food. The few well-conducted studies in this area (summarised here and here) suggest: 

• There is no evidence that vitamins, minerals and trace elements in organic food are greater than in conventional foods for most food types, but
• There is some (slight) evidence that leafy veges and potatoes may have a higher vitamin C content when grown organically and that some organic veges and cereal crops may have better quality proteins and higher iron and manganese than their conventional cousins.
• Grass/clover fed cows may produce milk higher in vitamin E, beta-carotene and lutein as well as Omega-3 fatty acids.

If these trends are correct (and not just statistical anomalies), the question then becomes whether this makes any difference to our health. A systematic review of research in 2010 showed that in the past  52 years, there have been only 12 well-conducted studies comparing the health benefits of organic vs conventional food. And the majority of these showed no difference in health outcomes. Food for thought. I’ll get to some conclusions in a minute, promise.

Finally though, to taste. Such a subjective thing, one wonders how anyone could ever reasonably claim that any food ‘tastes better’ than another. Surely it’s in the eye mouth of the beholder.  So while research has shown repeatedly that people who buy organic food claim that it tastes better, and some research has demonstrated that in blind taste testings, things like orange juice and bread are rated as yummier when organic, this is an area where science can’t tell me what to do, really. If I think it tastes better, then it does (for me). I’ll have to see taste for myself.

Ok, time for some conclusions. Oh god. What to make of all this?? Ok, systematically:

• Organic food costs a LOT more than conventional food
• Organic food is mostly pesticide free (but not 100%)
• While Australian chicken and lamb are fairly safe from antibiotics and hormones, pesticides may still be a concern for animal products from animals fed on non organic grain. 
• Some Australian fresh produce is more likely to have high levels of pesticide residue at than others (see my nerdy but colourful chart on the previous organic post)
• There's little evidence that organic food is higher in nutrients, but the evidence there is points to potential benefits in organic milk, leafy greens, potatoes and cereal crops.
• Only my taste buds can tell me if organic tastes better.

Here's the thing. While I wish it wasn't so, the first point is the most important. There's just no point thinking that I can regularly increase my food budget by a third, no matter what the rest of the list says. BUT there may be a way to shop smarter and get value out of organic, so here's what I plan to do. I'll buy organic milk, bread and fresh produce which falls into the orange column of my chart (e.g., carrots, spinach, apples, pears). If my budget can bear it, I'll choose organic pork, because pork is treated with hormones in Australia, so there is that plus the pesticide (from the feed given to the pigs) to be thinking about. Beef also falls into this category but luckily Coles offers the hormone free beef (at no added cost to me!) so I'll take them up on that. 

And believe it or not folks, but I might just try the whole growing it myself thing for some of my veges, which will help. I'm soon to have my own backyard to dig around in, after all. We'll see.

So, that's that. A semi-organic-as-much-as-I-can-afford-it lifestyle for me. Probably what I would have guessed three posts ago, but at least now I know why I'm doing it. To some extent. 

I'd love to know if you've ever considered going organic and if so, what you decided to do. It's a tough one!

Creamy caramels

Creamy caramels

2/3 of the way through a series about going organic, and I’ve got a hankering for caramels. I’ll finish the organic thing later, I promise!

There are still days when I miss my lollies, and this week I’ve been really feeling it. I’ve been friends with them for so many years. I no longer crave them, but every now and then I have just a little sigh and a little wish for a sweet treat. And chocolate is all well and good, but some days you just need CANDY.

I’ve done a few experiments with glucose-based jelly lollies and hard boiled lollies, but I’m not happy with the outcome (I’ll post a recipe if I ever get them right). But the other day I wanted caramels, and nothing else, so I set out to see if they could be made without fructose. I found a recipe online here and decided to mold it to my fructose-free will. Mwa ha ha!

This recipe makes these soft, buttery caramels. 

Delicious for a sweet treat, and just what I was after J You will need a candy thermometer. Mine was about $6 from House (or was it Home?).

Here are the ingredients:

·         1 cup glucose syrup

·         1/4  cup water

·         1 cups dextrose powder

·         1 cup double cream

·         1/4 cup evaporated milk

·         1/4 cup softened butter, cut into small cubes

Line a pan with alfoil and spray the foil with oil/ cooking spray. This is VERY important unless you want to be picking foil out of your teeth later J

In a medium saucepan, heat the glucose syrup, water and dextrose. Just a tip for measuring out the glucose syrup which is so thick that it seems more like a solid than a liquid (at least when you are trying to get it from jar to measuring cup and from cup to pan!). Put the jar in a saucepan or bowl filled with hot water and leave it for a little bit. The syrup gets runnier as it heats slightly – which makes it much easier to pour out. Believe me, you will thank me for this step.

So, once the syrup, dextrose and water are in a saucepan and heating away, stir them until sugar dissolves (mine still looked a bit cloudy but wasn’t getting any clearer so I just let it go to the next stage: ). Allow the mixture to come to the boil, reduce the heat so that it is bubbling away by itself and insert the candy thermometer. Let the mixture boil until the candy thermometer shows 120 C (250 F).

While this is happening, you need to prepare the cream and evaporated milk by heating them in a separate saucepan- they need to be warm, but don’t let them boil. Have your butter ready as well.

When the sugar mixture hits 120C, it’s time to tip in the heated cream/evaporated milk mixture and the butter. The temperature will decrease- relax, this is normal.

Pull up a chair because you need to stir constantly from now on. Keep the candy thermometer in the mixture and keep stirring (while it bubbles away) until the thermometer hits 118 C (245 F). The recipe actually said 244, but let’s not split hairs here. It should be a lovely golden caramelly colour. If you want a firmer, chewier caramel, cook the candy until the temperature comes up to 120-125C. 

Pour into your prepared pan. Don’t scrape it from the bottom of the saucepan (no idea why not, the recipe says so).

Now the hard part. Leave the caramel alone. Overnight. Don’t worry, there is probably some left in the pan that you can scrape out and taste. If you are like me, you’ll probably get impatient and try and cut it early, but it really does need ages to set at room temperature and it apparently gets a smoother, silkier texture if left to cool and set at room temperature rather than in the fridge.

To cut it, tip it face down onto some baking paper, peel the foil away from the bottom (unless you are like me and didn’t grease the foil enough, in which case cut the foil away), and then cut into whatever size pieces you like using a greased knife.

If you cooked to 118C, your caramels will be very soft and you need to wrap them to keep their shape. They look very cute when wrapped (I just used baking paper in two stages- see below).

Wrap a strip as wide as the caramel around it once. Then place on a rectangle piece, wrap around, and twist the ends:

Voila!

But if you plan to eat them straight away, don’t care about shape, or you made them firmer, you don’t need to worry about this step (which I will admit is a tad fiddly)- just store them in an airtight container. The recipe says they will be good for two weeks, but I’ll have to get back to you on that one. I found with previous glucose candy experiments that it doesn’t last as well as sugar candy.

My only other comment is that if you are making this for yourself, you might want to halve the recipe. There is no way I would want to eat this much caramel in two weeks by myself, as delicious as it is.

Enjoy!

Pesticides, hormones and antibiotics, oh my

If you’ve already read part 1 of this series, you'll know I’m on a quest to find out whether I have to spend the bucks and buy organic if I want to be not only sugar free but healthy. It’s going to cost us 33% more. We don’t have 33% more. But I’m going to try and answer the question anyway and then work out what to do if the answer is yes- maybe sell my firstborn or start making all our clothes myself out of bin liners or something.

By the way I missed an obvious question in my last post when I was considering whether organic means ‘organic’ or not. I decided yes, as long as it’s certified (otherwise any old crap can be packaged as organic, since no one checks it). But the other question is whether, in this environmentally polluted world, any food can ever be completely organic (e.g., pesticide free)? So here’s the quick answer: no. In 2003, Australian testing showed that around 15% of organic produce had pesticide residue. And this US study looked at residue in organic and inorganic produce and found that over 20% of organic produce had residual pesticides. Around half of these were banned pesticides which were sprayed long ago but persist in the soil (such as DDT). On the other hand, pesticides were found in over 70% of regular, run-of-the-mill produce.

Which brings us nicely to today’s topic- how many nasties does your in-/non-/un-organic food contain and will these do us any harm if we eat them?

To get us started, here’s a quick run-down on hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and genetic modification used in producing inorganic Australian fresh food.  In case you are wondering, this information is unlikely to apply to any other country- policies and practices in farming, preparing, packaging and transporting, not to mention testing and policing standards, vary hugely. So much for globalisation. But anyway, here’s how we do it in Oz:

Dairy: Australian dairy cattle are not treated with hormones. Dairy cows can be treated with antibiotics if these are prescribed by a vet for the cow’s health, but there is a moratorium on the milk from that cow while on the antibiotics and for a period afterwards. 

Meat: Australian beef and pork may be treated with hormones such as oestrogen or testosterone to increase growth (note that Coles non organic beef is hormone free- thanks Curtis!). Australian chicken and lamb are hormone free. 

Antibiotics are used in all meat industries to treat disease in animals. However, red meat industries are required to withhold animals treated with antibiotics from the market for a defined period, and the Australian Government's National Residue Survey monitors our meat. The chicken industry have demonstrated that no antibiotics remain in chicken meat.

Fruit and vegetables: Australian non organic produce may contain any of 300 pesticides registered for use in Australia. Testing of produce for residual pesticides is conducted by the industry itself, and by state and federal government. Industry tests are the most comprehensive (but not the most independent). State testing is highly variable- ACT and Tasmania do not test for pesticide residue, while Victoria tests locally produced fruit and veg, but not fruit and veg imported from overseas. The Commonwealth government tests apples, pears, blueberries and onions for local consumption, as well as fruit and veg going overseas. 

Wheat: Australian wheat is treated with pesticides and may be genetically modified. The level of pesticides remaining in wheat for consumption is regulated and monitored by the Australian National Residue Survey. All genetically modified foods have to be declared on the labels of Australian foods.

Huh, better than I expected, in some ways. On this analysis, pesticides appear to be the biggest concern for the nonorganic shopper, especially in the categories of fruit, veg, wheat products, and (since animals eat pesticide-treated products) meat and dairy. In other words, all of the above. Darn it.  

Maybe pesticides are like salt, though: a little just adds an extra tang, a lot is unhealthy? This website gives a calculator for the number of servings of a fruit or vegetable that you can eat without ingesting an unsafe level of pesticides.  Apparently, I could safely eat 529 servings of apples, 10,877 servings of lettuce, or 7379 servings of potatoes in a single day without the pesticide residue having an effect on my body. The numbers are based on the No-Observable Adverse Effect level, which is the highest dose that fails to kill or observably harm experimental animals. It’s not really that reassuring, to be honest. And there’s very little published research out there examining cumulative effects, the combined effects of multiple pesticides, or the possible long term impact of even tiny doses on human body systems. We still have so much to learn. The alarm about the harmful effects of BPA, which was commonly used in plastics since 1957, was only sounded in 2007. A chemical like BPA is different to a pesticide, but can we really say that we know all there is to know about the man-made chemicals we are potentially putting into our bodies via what we eat, even if they have been used for decades? Short answer: heck no

Importantly, especially for someone who is relatively convinced but hasn’t found her food budget increase magically while she was researching this (ie, me), some foods may be more worth the extra dollars to buy organic than others. The US Environmental Working Group (a non-profit organisation) provide a ‘Shoppers Guide to Pesticides’ which they developed based on government data on pesticide levels in foods. They list twelve fruits and veg which were found to have the worst levels of pesticides (and they recommend to buy these organic) plus fifteen which are low in pesticides. Nice. Innocent old no-calorie celery was the worst on this list. Well shucky darn.

I couldn’t find a similar list for Australia so I made my own, below. I’ve done this using the results of the Victorian Produce Monitoring Program report from (2008/9). Some caveats for the below: it is based on the VPMP's testing of limited samples (sometimes as little as one sample) of Victorian grown produce. (I did look in other states but I couldn’t find individual data about produce). I’ve interpreted the data to show ‘low’, ‘moderate’ and ‘high’ risks of pesticides based on the proportion of fruit and veg samples which showed pesticides in these tests, plus I’ve highlighted (in bold) those which had at least one sample fall above the level considered safe in Australia.

 

Low risk of pesticides  No samples showed detectible levels of pesticides	Moderate risk of pesticides Less than 50% of samples contained pesticides	High risk of pesticides More than 50% of samples contained pesticides
Fruit: Blueberries Tangelos Honeydew Rockmelon Watermelon Dates Olives Persimmon Kiwifruit Pomegranate Veg: Asparagus Beans Broccolini Brussels sprouts Capsicum Chilli Eggplant Mushrooms Sweet corn Pumpkin Bok choy Lettuce Salad mix Silverbeet Garlic Onions Fennel Fennel leaves Beetroot Potatoes	Fruit: Plums Grapefruit Oranges Veg: Artichokes Celery Cabbage Cauliflower Cucumber Broccoli Tomatoes Peas Squash Zucchini	Fruit: Boysenberries Mandarin Pears Nectarines Apples Strawberries Apricots Peaches Grapes Lemons Blackberries Raspberries Veg: Carrots Spinach Horseradish Celeriac Parsnips

I’m going to summarise this all in my final post in this series (if I ever get there). I’ll have to leave answering the final organic question- does it taste better and is it better for you- until then.

I'm off to enjoy a nonorganic apple before all of the above sinks in fully...