Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

When an author writes a cookbook with only 'delicious' in mind, the recipes only need turn out to be, well, delicious. However, when an author writes a book that (at the least) implies the recipes are somehow 'healthier' - the bar for those recipes has definitely been raised. Which means it's not enough for the author to know how to rub two ingredients together. She needs to do some research about the purported subject, in this case, nutrition/human biology in general and sugar in particular. Had Ms. Chang done so, she could not have allowed her sub-title to stand: Recipes for Desserts Using Natural Sweeteners and Little-To-No-White Sugar. That's because: 1. There is *nothing* 'natural' about any of the sweeteners in these recipes. All - from Agave to Turbinado - are heavily refined and processed, despite Ms. Chang's claim otherwise. All have zero (or nearly zero) nutrients. All (with the exception of Agave, one of the most dangerous sweeteners around, and far worse than High Fructose Corn Syrup) act in precisely the same way in the body. They *all* spike insulin and blood sugars. Which is what makes you fat, because insulin's main job is not, as most believe, to lower blood sugars, but to store fat. That is its main evolutionary raison d'etre. 2. White sugar = sugar. Brown sugar = sugar. Honey = sugar. Maple syrup = sugar. Dates and Fruit juices? Sugar. The sugar in chocolate is ... sugar. And while Agave and Coconut Sugar may also make you *and* your liver fat (despite the claims on the packaging, coconut sugar is actually 55% fructose and agave is 75-95% fructose), they are also just plain sugar in terms of the how your body will treat it. In the Introduction, Ms. Chang states: "It's a part of my DNA to indulge in sweetness from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep..." and "all I eat all day long is cake and cookies and muffins..." Several recent studies have shown that sugar is every bit as *physically and psychologically* addictive (lighting up the exact same pleasure centers of the brain) as cocaine. And Ms. Chang appears to be so hooked on her drug of choice that she cannot see that most of her low sugar recipes (so-called) are neither low in sugar nor any better or healthier than the stuff she sells at Flour, about which she writers: "I sell sugar. Plain and simple. It's what I do." It's certainly what she does in this book, and that's just counting the added sugars and not all the flours that turn to glucose in the body and *also* spike insulin and blood sugars. And make you fat. Let's look at two recipes. The first is Fudgy Mascarpone Brownies (pg 42), and in the recipe introduction, Ms. Chang states that the 'regular' version made and sold at her bakery contains "2 Tbsp (6 teaspoons) of sugar per brownie." She goes on to say "go right now and measure 2 Tbsp of sugar and imagine swallowing that in one sitting." Of course I don't need to imagine very hard, since this new 'reduced sugar' recipe contains - wait for it - 6.4 teaspoons of sugar! More than 2 tablespoons! Where's the hidden sugar? In the chocolate. Ms. Chang says her chocolate contains "about 11 grams of sugar per ounce, about 2.5 teaspoons." Actually, it's closer to 12 grams, which is three teaspoons - or 1 Tablespoon. This recipe calls for 390 grams of chocolate. That's 14 ounces. 14 x 12 = 168 grams of sugar. Add that to the 140 grams of actual sugar in the recipe. That's 308 total grams of sugar. Divide by 4 to get the teaspoons: 77. Divide 77 teaspoons by 12 brownies (what the recipe states it makes). That's 6.4 teaspoons of sugar - or MORE than 2 tablespoons per piece. But that's not even the worst. Let's look at the Yellow Birthday Cake. There's 175 g sugar in the cake, and 144 g sugar (12 oz times 12 grams sugar per ounce in the chocolate) in the frosting. Total: 319 grams of added sugar. That's 80 teaspoons of sugar in a small 8-inch cake. Let's be generous and say it will serve 10 real people. That's 8 teaspoons of sugar per slice, or just one teaspoon short of THREE TABLESPOONS OF SUGAR per piece! Seriously. This is not 'low' sugar or 'less' sugar or 'reduced' sugar. This is just slightly less lethal than the cakes made and served at most bakeries these days. I guess "slightly less lethal recipes" wouldn't be a publisher's dream of a sub-title. Then there's the general messiness of the recipes, where some ingredients are listed in gram and ounces, some in ounces and cups, some in other measurements. And the definite slight-of-hand where *only* the 'all-chocolate' recipes list how many grams of sugar are in each serving, but the rest of the recipes (the bulk of the book) say nothing whatever about the ingredient that purports to be the book's main subject. When you analyze those recipes for sugar content, you immediately understand why. Look, I understand why publisher's are jumping on the Low Sugar bandwagon. The public is finally getting it: fat doesn't make you sick and fat, sugar (and processed foods) make you sick and fat. But the answer isn't to publish pretend books that give the illusion of cutting back sugar to almost nothing (no more than 6 teaspoons a day of added sugar from all sources for women, and no more than 10 teaspoons per day for men) in cupcakes and muffins that are actually loaded with the drug -- the answer is to be honest and say "can't really be done, so best to get the sugar monkey off your back once and for all and eat a few squares of plain dark chocolate or berries in cream for daily dessert, and eat a cupcake or slice of cake once or twice a year." As if.