 So let's start with flour plain old wheat flour. It's in everything so it's got to be good for you, right? flour is loaded with lectins and Now with the advent of really useful leaky gut tests that I have available and others have available I am more and more and more amazed that our sense that Gluten causes leaky gut and the other components of wheat cause leaky gut is is borne out every day Hockey player National Hockey League NHL hockey player who developed out of the blue ulcerative colitis and He's lost over 70 pounds and is is off right now and When we tested him for leaky gut This guy wildly reacts to all the components of wheat wheat germ aglutin in which is the haul all the different components of gluten and he reacts to the 25 to 30 percent of proteins in wheat that are non-gluten and he just lights it up and The good news is I just talked to him actually yesterday He is now making actually a dramatic recovery After we took these things away from him It's so much so that he's going to spend the summer actually teaching Hockey in Canada between seasons and he were hopeful that he's going to make a full recovery for for next year's season So It's not the good stuff like you and I used to know So it's pretty rare to come across a dessert recipe without some kind of flour in it So what can you do just well? I'm not going to do that anymore. Well, frankly, it depends on what you're cooking So let me give you a few tips My recipe developer Kate and I For the last three years more than three years now have been Figuring our way around this arena We have a lot of wonderful Recipes in our various cookbooks and books We have a lot of people who have taken the lectin free lifestyle to heart Then I'll mention those as we go along and there's actually a lot of products out there That didn't even exist three years ago when the plant paradox started so for cookies The best combination is almond flour and coconut flour plus a little xanthan gum for structure Now if you do without the xanthan gum, you'll you'll get a drier more crumbly cookie And quite frankly a lot of people like a drier crumbly cookie So the fun stuff is these are becoming easier and easier to find even in most supermarkets You don't necessarily have to go to a specialty store anymore You don't necessarily have to go on amazon or thrive market But these things are getting more and more available Now for cakes Almond flour and coconut flour make a really a nice dense cake like for instance like our olive oil cake Now if you want you can add millet flour and tapioca starch for a fluffier cake That quite frankly gets pretty close to a traditional birthday cake And again, it's really kind of fun to see you know if you're after a single layer cake a pancake Like our olive oil cake then almond flour and coconut flour is really going to make a really nice dense cake Now how about for pie well almond flour and tapioca starch Actually do make a nice flaky crust It'll likely be a little more delicate than a traditional pie crust But the flavor is actually fantastic and it's kind of fun to fool family and friends and they go Oh, you know, this is this is a really great pie crust, you know, what's in it? And then you you tell them like what? Now there's always alternatives to almond flour for those that are allergic And there's now a number of flowers that I've experimented with that Kate's experimented with Certainly they're harder to find But think about hazelnut flour. It's getting more and more available If you're have a nut allergy tiger nuts are not nuts Even though the word sounds like a nut. They're actually a tuber You can find tiger nut flour. I think it's great to work with Green banana flour is available There's a lot of things to like about green banana flour But it's still one of the harder flowers to find But look around I particularly like chestnut flour There's a lot of chestnut flour recipes that are used in Italy You can usually do a one-to-one swap with chestnut flour for almond flour Again, it's a little harder to find Some chinese groceries have them some italian groceries particularly traditional italian groceries. That's where I get mine so Half the fun is trial and error and get the family involved try two or three different versions simultaneously, but it's really great fun to experiment with this and Some of my best moments growing up was experimenting with recipes with with my mother in the kitchen And we just had a great time and yeah Sometimes the batch was a disaster and you'd have a good laugh over it. Well, we won't be doing that again So you can also Do some fun stuff to make a crumb style crust with dried figs and pulse nuts Just be careful with the dried figs or dates because they do have Really concentrated fruit toast content. So just be aware And you just press this crust into a pan All right, brad So brad is where it gets really interesting because you really do need something to give it that gluteny stretch Which is really why we're so addicted to gluten in the first place It gives structure it gives stretch and it's also because of the ability to stretch It makes it light and fluffy So we've we've played a lot with this. I like psyllium husk for this stretch And if you mix it with water, it forms a really gloppy paste that really does work great instead of gluten Now I like a mix of flax and millet flour for structure And tapioca starch and arrowroot starch to create that fluffy texture Now you can often substitute any of these flowers one to one with regular flour, but don't try one individually It's just your it's not going to work. Um, you really have to get multiple flowers And Right now there isn't a perfect lectin light flour. That's a perfect swap for regular old all-purpose Baking flour for a lot of things I find like two-thirds Almond flour one-third either coconut flour or tapioca starch And a pinch of xanthan gum works really pretty well. Okay. So what about sugar? I mean, who can imagine a holiday dessert without sugar? Well, like I said, I have a big sweet tooth But there are always ways to satisfy your sweet tooth without packing on the pounds And the good news is that there are a lot of healthy sugar substitutes that are actually becoming widely available So one of my baking go-to is a one-for-one monk fruit sweetener Like the Lakonto brand which is now available in a lot of regular grocery stores And it's even in Costco now And by the way, they make a great maple syrup substitute That's a great use instead of corn syrup based maple syrups And it's perfectly great on our pancake recipes from the book And even if you want to find one of the widely available Paleo or keto pancake recipes that are prepackaged that are also in Costco now My grandkids love Lakonto maple syrup on their pancakes that they make from our recipes And so, you know, if they can't tell the difference, believe me, you won't be able to tell the difference And it's actually good for you Now you can also use things like xylitol, erythritol, stevia, pure monk fruit, and even agave inulin Now please do not confuse agave inulin with agave syrup Agave syrup is pure fructose And I see all these sites that say, you know, paleo friendly or keto friendly And they've got a half a cup or a cup of agave syrup in it Or for that matter, a half a cup of maple syrup in it I got news for you. There is no way that that's keto friendly. It's pure fructose. So please Don't be misled by agave syrup There is a great inulin based sweetener, which is a little hard to find called just like sugar But you can use that one for one in recipes to replace sugar and it works really well in baking There's another new sweetener that's becoming more available called allulose It works well Dave Asprey and I are actually fond of allulose with the proviso that so far Most allulose seems to be coming from corn And he and I are on the lookout for non-corn based allulose We'll we'll keep your we'll tell you when we find it He's actually I think trying to get a company interested in making it. So Look for it Okay, how about fat in your cooking? Well, quite frankly holiday cooking is going to need some form of fat So go ahead and use butter. But please use French or italian or Switzerland butter. They're actually becoming easier and easier to find We're beginning to see a two butter products in the stores. There's now some a two yogurt that's propping up So people are beginning to recognize that there is a difference between a two and a one casein So look for it. It's available Don't be misled by all the advertising that this is grass fed butter Most of the cows sadly in the united states are a one cows. They're holsteins So even a step of eating grass is certainly better than giving them the crap. They're normally fed But it's now pretty easy to find italian butter Or french butter. Costco even has italian butter. So it's easier to find Now extracts the no extract almond extracts are definitely your friend Mint extracts is great with chocolate A word of interesting warning as I have mentioned I do a lot of leaky gut tests and a lot of food sensitivity test And in some of my really difficult patients with a really difficult leaky gut and autoimmune disease I'm finding A handful actually more than a handful that react to vanilla bean And they react to Almond even almond flour So i'm not saying please avoid vanilla extract Please avoid almonds, but make sure your almond flour is blanched almond flour not the stuff that still has the skins and if You want to check try and and you're suspicious about vanilla as a culprit Try a imitation vanilla extract and just see if you notice a difference Now is there a healthy shortening? Well, really coconut oil Is probably the best alternative If you can find red palm oil, which is made from the palm fruit Rather than palm oil, which is made from the kernel Red palm oil actually has tremendous amounts of polyphenols And it's full of toco-triennals the really important compound component of vitamin e So those tocoferols and toco-triennals and so red palm fruit Shortening actually is it's one of your better choices and Usually you got to go to a health food store or find that online. It's it's not readily available yet Now instead of you using vegetable oil Use avocado oil. It has a very neutral flavor Uh if make an olive oil cake I've been really playing with plain sesame oil not toasted sesame oil And I got to say, uh, it's my new Go-to oil for a number of reasons that you're going to learn about in the energy paradox It has an absolute neutral flavor when you toast it. It has that you know, really great toasted sesame flavor But plain sesame oil has an absolute neutral flavor. So, you know experiment the solid a season and give it a try Okay, so that covers the big ingredients, but what about the mix-ins? Well, you know extracts vanilla almond extracts or your friend mint extract is great with chocolate I love citrus zest It's loaded with polyphenols number one And actually citrus pith the white pith that's right under the zest has some of the best sources of Cure-sitin, which is really one of the best plant-based antihistamines. There is so don't be afraid of actually Putting some of that citrus pith in Chocolate as an add-in the darker the better particularly if you're making chocolate chip cookies or any chocolate Just kick up, you know start with 72 and work your way up We're rapidly seeing Stevia sweetened chocolate bars. There's a number I'll give a shout out to my hometown company of lilies in santa barbara. I have no relationship with them But hometown success story But there's a number of ones that are now coming out with either stevia or monk fruit base And there's they're well worth your you're trying them You do have to be careful particularly with erythritol Or xylitol based sweetener in chocolate Too much of these often give people abdominal cramps and quite frankly diarrhea And maybe that's just telling you you're eating too many of those bars and maybe you ought to cut back More amazing episodes just like this one watch now sugar And no, there's no such thing as good for you or healthier sugar Sugar is sugar and that goes for coconut sugar brown sugar agave