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Low-Carbohydrate Nutrition in Pregnancy

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NOTE - True low-carb eating may not involve carb substitutes at all.  And if you're finding that eating these low-carb foods is still causing blood sugar rises, it's possible that some of the claims about being low carb aren't actually true.  Diet Doctor has some great information about The Dreamfields Pasta Fraud and Low carb bread: Another fairy tale bites the dust.  He also has a really great explanation of eating low carb - LCHF for Beginners.


All About Sweeteners from Chris Kresser

Healthy Alternative Sweeteners for Pregnancy - safety of stevia, maltitol and other natural sweeteners with low glycemic index.

If you have a cook in the family, you're way ahead of the game.  There are tons of websites and blogs devoted to low-carb recipes for carb-like foods:

I particularly like SavingDinner.com, Your Lighter Side and The Bulletproof Diet.  (They're the authors of The Better Baby Book, an excellent resource.)  The Diet Doctor has some great information about eating low carb - LCHF for Beginners, including information in other languages. I also like Wholesomely Delicious Low-Carb, Family-Friendly Recipes [12/28/18] by CATHERINE NEWMAN from diatribe.org - These are excellent starter recipes for moms with kids who are trying to reduce their carbs intake.


CauliMash instead of mashed potatoes - poke around to find a recipe you like
Oopsie Rolls instead of sandwich rolls

You can even make some treats that are usually awful for you but can be made to be relatively healthy:

Coconut Cupcakes - Coconut oil is now considered healthy.  HURRAY!
Low Carb Girl Scout Samoas - these seem quite ambitious, but you could make a very large batch and freeze them to last a while.

The internet is full of low-carb recipes.  Here are some excellent collections and blogs:

LAKANTO®  is a mixture of the high-purity Monk Fruit extract (Luohan Guo) and Erythritol.  It's a delicious natural zero calorie, zero glycemic sweetener with the sumptuous rich taste of sugar. - they offer a free Celebrity Chef Cookbook

Sugar-free Low-Carb Recipes from sugarfreelowcarbrecipes.com

Recipes from PurpleRosy
   
Low-Carb, Gluten-Free & Sugar-Free Recipes from yourlighterside.com


There is some research to show that it's possible to reduce the carbs and calories in rice by 50% by cooking it with a little coconut oil and refrigerating it for at least 12 hours before reheating it.  NOTE - you have to be very careful about food poisoning so read all the precautions!  This method is described on web pages from sciencealert.com and dailymail.co.uk.  You can also check out the description of the talk to be presented at the American Chemical Society - New low-calorie rice could help cut rising obesity rates.

Low-Carb…Carbs? Hack Your Rice With Coconut Oil By: DAVE ASPREY [6/24/15]



If you're not such a great cook, you may find it easiest to eat simple foods and just avoid foods with carbs.  Or you might want to look around the internet for carb-like foods sold as low-carb foods.  Beware, some of these have been fraudulent in the past, so keep a nutrition log and track how different foods affect your blood sugars.



Netrition - The Internet's Premier Nutrition Superstore!  Netrition carries an excellent selection of Low Carbohydrate foods and treats from a wide variety of producers.  I list some of my favorite products below, or you can do your own search:


Netrition - The Internet's Premier
                              Nutrition Superstore!



Breads, Crackers and Pasta

It's really nice to have some basic breads to use in sandwiches, crackers for dipping in hummus and pasta to go with some healthy homemade high-protein sauces.

Right now, my favorite bread-like products are from KNOW BETTER FOODS. Their waffles are very, very good, as are their chocolate cupcakes. (If you heat the chocolate cupcakes on low heat for 15 minutes, they almost taste like lava cake.) I like their slices as a basic staple, and their buns and muffins are good for special occasion meals. [Ed: Sadly, KNOW BETTER FOODS seems to have disappeared. It's a shame; I really loved some of their foods!]

So, right now, my favorite low-carb bread product is the SmartBun from Smart Baking Company. They also make some tasty SmartCakes and SmartMufns (sic).

These are the ones I've found most recently, and which are my current favorite: The SmartBUN from The Smart Baking Company / smart-baking.com - a delicious gluten-free hamburger bun that is high in protein, fiber, Omega-3’s and 72 calories. Combining flax, egg whites and all natural non GMO ingredients.  They also make the Smartcake, which looks great!  THANK YOU!!!

SmartFoods Powered by WIO - I haven't tried these yet, but they look very good.

Skinny Crisps  are great low-carb crackers.  I especially like the Seeded kind.  I like the Toasty Onion, too, but they're not quite as crisp.

Here are some other good low-carb bready options that you can order from Netrition:

Miracle Noodle brand offers Miracle Rice, Angel Hair or Fettucine.  I thought the pastas were just so-so and almost a little unappetizing.  But I absolutely loved the Miracle Rice; it met my expectations in absolutely every way.  It was great with Chinese takeout, at least!  What a pleasure to discover the Miracle Rice!

Banza makes high protein, low carb pasta made from chickpeas. They also make a rice-like product.


La Tortilla Factory makes an excellent Carb-Cutting Tortilla.  This is currently my favorite bread-y item.

Joseph's Middle East Bakery Low Carb Pita Bread

Joseph's Middle East Bakery Reduced Carb Tortillas

CarLO CARBiano Low Carb Ready-to-Heat Pizza Crust

Dreamfields Low-Digestible Pasta

Julian Bakery bread - These can be hard to find, but their web pages list distributing merchants.  NOTE - Their Amazing Sourdough really is amazing and has only 4 grams net carbs per slice.  Their Formula #1 used to be really wonderful, but as of Oct., 2012, they've reworked the recipe to make it softer, but now it's kind of like a sponge, and I actually couldn't eat the one bite I took.

Great Low Carb Bread Company  818-505-9499 - I don't have any experience with these, but they seem worth checking out.


Beverages

If you're missing fruit juices or other sugary drinks, you may really like the SweetLeaf Liquid Stevia Flavor.  They have an amazing breadth of flavors, including Cola, Root Beer, Berry, Hazelnut, Peppermint and Watermelon.  My favorites are Vanilla Creme and Cinnamon, mixed 2:1 in hot water in the colder weather; and berry or lemon in chilled water in the warmer weather.

Yummy Low-Carb Treats without Maltitol

If you're a milk chocoholic, you will be VERY PLEASED with the taste of these stevia-sweetened chocolate bars by Coco Polo by YC Chocolate.   I've tried quite a few and now consider these to be as tasty as any chocolate made with regular sugar, only they're much better for your health. Most sugar-free milk chocolates require maltitol to achieve any noticeable sweetness. This bar does it with stevia and a bit of erythritol. I also appreciate that the cocoa is sourced through sustainable practices and most ingredients are non-GMO and on the more natural side. If they start making one with coconut, I will have found the Holy Grail of sugar-free chocolate bars!

Low Carb Specialties ChocoPerfection Bars.  I wish they would offer more varieties.

Lucienne's offers dark chocolate with stevia in three varieties.  They also have gluten-free and sugar-free hazelnut and almond cookies, which are quite tasty if you like nuts.  "Our Sugar Free Chocolate is made with premium quality cocoa beans, grown on Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms in Ecuador."  They use stevia as the sweetener. I found the chocolate too dark for my tastes, but it was very good for dark chocolate.

There are some fabulous mixes from Dixie Diner; my favorite is Dixie Diner Carb Counters Brownie Mix

I also love the Big Train cookie mixes, especially Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter.  Their carb levels are a little higher than Dixie Diner, so watch the numbers.  Big Train Low Carb Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix is really yummy.  They're so good, you'll be sorely tempted to eat a lot more than the 7 grams of net carbs they tout.  The bag says it makes 34 cookies . . . I made two dozen of what seemed like standard-size chocolate chip cookies.

Aunt Gussie's  offers some excellent Sugar-free Cookies and Sugar-free Spelt Cookies. 

Julian Bakery bread - they have zero-, one-, two- and more-net-carbs breads.  If you can get them fresh, they're really yummy!  Sourdough with yummy butter and low-carb jam is actually really yummy!  [Carried at Bumble Bee Health Foods  in Mountain View, CA.]  NOTE - As of October, 2012, they have revised their recipes for SmartCarb#1 and SmartCarb#2.  I have to say that the former tastes like an organic kitchen sponge.  I haven't tried the latter yet.

Nature's Hollow makes some very nice sugar-free jam preserves, syrup, Bar-B-Q Sauce, Ketchup and Honey. Jam & Jelly Fruit Preserves.   They're sweetened with xylitol.  The total carbs is not that much less than with real sugar, but some of those come from the fruits themselves.  [Carried at Bumble Bee Health Foods  in Mountain View, CA.  Apparently Whole Foods carries these, too.]  This YouTube video about Nature's Hollow explains the health benefits of xylitol and offers a promo code.


Very Acceptable Low-Carb Treats without Maltitol

So, let's face it, you're trying to trick your body into thinking that non-nutritive foods are yummy.  This is a tall order.  So there are large classes of foods that are acceptable substitutes when you know that the high-carb foods are really bad for you.

[COMING SOON]



VERY YUMMY Low-Carb Treats WITH Maltitol or Erythritol

Remember, the maltitol can cause "intestinal discomfort", so be cautious!  Try one piece one day and then maybe two pieces the next day and see how your body does with it.

See's Sugar Free products are really tasty.  I would prefer a milk chocolate nut product, but I'm learning to enjoy dark chocolate, too.  These really taste very good.

Halo Top Ice Cream is low-calorie, high-protein, and low-sugar and tastes really very good.  They're at our local Whole Foods as of Sept., 2016.  (They used to carry Clemmy's Ice Creams.) For an extra low-carb treat, you can make Magic Shell, which has coconut oil to make it harden on contact with ice cream.  It's quite fun.  There are lots of recipes online, but the easy low-carb version I use is about two-thirds cup each of coconut oil and  and Coco Polo milk chocolate chunks (sweetened with stevia), plus 1 teaspoon vanilla and twelve drops Sweet Leaf clear liquid stevia.  I melt it on low temperature (about 140 degrees) in the toaster oven until it's liquidy enough to blend everything together.  I do this in a Corelle bowl which can then be used to store the leftovers for next time.  It's easy and delicious.  I've also used this as a sort of frosting on the low-carb cakes from smart-baking.com.  These don't taste quite like the real thing, but they go a long way towards relieving any desires for cake and ice cream.

Dr. John's Candies are from a dentist who wanted to create better-tasting sugar-free candies.  He started with hard candies and caramels and taffies and now has expanded into chocolates.  I'm VERY impressed with the quality of his peanut butter and mint chocolates.  But they're all very, very good.

Perfectly Sweet carries a great selection of sugar-free or no-sugar-added products.  They carry the only maltitol-sweetened petits fours I've found, and I can attest that they're really good!  They also offer maltitol-sweetened baking goods, such as marshmallow fluff, and a Whitman's Sampler diversity of milk and dark chocolates. [NOTE - Some of their products are sweetened with Splenda and other artificial sweeteners which I recommend avoiding during pregnancy.]

Netrition - The Internet's Premier Nutrition Superstore!  Netrition carries an excellent selection:

Judy's Candy products are absolutely delicious.  The Sugar Free Caramels are both creamy and a little chewy, and the Sugarless Caramel Clusters are terrific.  They also carry Sugar Free English Toffee and Sugar Free Peanut Brittle.

There are some fairly fancy European chocolates from La Nouba, including Silhouette Belgian Chocolate, and they also offer a fabulous Chocolate Hazelnut Spread, like Nutella.

Asher's offers Chocolates Sugar Free Candy Bars and Sugar Free Candy

YC Chocolate offers maltitol chocolate as well as their new line of stevia products.  The maltitol chocolate offerings include creamy truffles and boxes of assorted chocolates, including Valentine's boxes.




This Web page is referenced from other pages containing related information about Gestational Diabetes

 

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