How can I make healthy desserts?

Desserts and sweets can be healthy for you, if they are made with natural ingredients like whole grains, fruit, nuts/seeds, and even beans. Watch family physician and author Joel Fuhrman, MD, explain how to make healthy desserts and sweet treats.

Transcript

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You can use whole, intact grains, you can use fresh fruits, you can use whole nuts and seeds, and you can mix beans in there.

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So instead of flour and sugar, we're using beans and nuts and fresh fruit and dried fruit for sweeteners. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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You know, desserts are healthy. We're a primate with a big part of our tongue for the taste and enjoyment of sweet.

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And that means we're designed to be eating sweet fruit, not sugar, not white flour and corn.

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So in other words, desserts are good and healthy for you, especially if you're making like a brownie or a cake with a bean or an oat crust, or you're making a-- you know,

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a bean brownie, with beans and dates and fruit and cocoa powder, or you're making an ice cream by whipping some frozen

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fruit with a few almonds, or with some frozen banana or some almond milk, or you're making a-- You know, there's all types of ways we can make icings, cakes, pies, desserts, cookies, breakfast

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bars. In other words, you can use whole, intact grains, you can use fresh fruits, you can use whole nuts and seeds, and you can mix beans in there.

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So instead of flour and sugar, we're using beans and nuts and fresh fruit and dried fruit for sweeteners. That way, any sugar and carbohydrate

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is absorbed very slowly into your bloodstream, not coming in rapidly, spiking an insulin response. And insulin is the fat storage hormone.

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It keeps the glucose level going in slowly and not spiking up rapidly. [AUDIO LOGO]