Low GI & Omega 3 Rich Recipes

What to do with winter’s last gift to us: piles of passionfruit from the vine, ready to eat? I was inspired by a recipe for passionfruit butter on Souvlaki for the Soul. I replaced the caster sugar with low GI dark agave syrup. Agave syrup is higher in fructose than glucose, which is why it is absorbed more slowly and has a lower GI value.

However, just choosing low GI foods on their numbers is not a pathway to good health — remember, chocolate is low GI, because the fat content slows the sugar absorption, but none of us are pretending that it is good to eat chocolate to excess… it is when the GI value is lowered by bulking up with fibre (and a moderate amount of healthy fats) that the diet works to assist in weight loss and diabetic control. GI should be seen as a tool in your kit – not a rule in itself. Using agave in this recipe (after finding it in my health food store) prompted me to dig a little deeper into the agave story…

Agave syrup is “the new black” in sweeteners – another example of the commercialisation of traditional foods – the Aztecs called the Maguey cactus (the source of “Pulque” a bitter fermented drink sourced from the cactus juice), “7m-BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=aztecs%20agave%20food%20of%20the%20gods&f=false">food of the gods“. Agave syrup is a much more processed product sourced from the same plant. Runnier and sweeter than honey, and more soluble, you can use much less to achieve similar sweetness levels. For this recipe I used raw dark agave syrup, “loving earth” brand. The product website tells us the juice is derived from the wild Maguey cactus in Mexico, processed through filtering, and then vacuum evaporation, and never heated above 40 degrees celcius to protect the nutrient content. Because of these processing methods it is a favourite sweetener for raw food enthusiasts.

The caution for Agave is the same as the caution for all sources of fructose (hydrolysed corn syrup is the one that gets the worst press): fructose is digested in the liver, and has been shown to be a cause for “non alcoholic fatty liver”. Over the past 20-30 years, processed food has changed from using sugar to using hydrolysed corn syrup – check out the labels on your favourite snacks. There are some, including the Weston Price Foundation, who partially credit the rise in diabetes in the Western World to this change in type of sweetener.

Certainly, if you are overweight or have diabetes, there is developing evidence (in rat studies) that high fructose products may lead to fatty liver and thus provide an additional risk factor to heart disease (diabetes in itself is a risk factor for heart disease – so you don’t want to add in more risks like fatty liver). There is an interesting discussion of this, which brings mention to Agave on Stephan Guyunet’s website “Whole Health Source”, The article is titled: “How to fatten your liver”.

Even raw dark agave syrup (while less processed than the clearer version) contains concentrated sugar (in the form of fructose). In fact, ALL natural sweeteners contain varying proportions of fructose and glucose – sharing the load between insulin breaking down the glucose in your blood stream, and your enzymes breaking down the fructose in your liver. I am not going to take a passionate stance on any side of the sweetness debate. From what I can gather, the evidence is currently insufficient to say that one or the other sweetener is more or less healthy.

My take on sweeteners is this: use them sparingly, infrequently, and instead of relying on sweet and salty tastes, teach your taste buds the pleasures that foods have to offer you with their natural subtle sweet, salty, sour and spicy tastes – combined with the textures that water and fibre can add (such as in fruit).  Agave syrup is expensive, and has only been around for just over ten years.With the emerging evidence that free, unbound fructose may cause your liver to look like an alcoholic’s (and develop cirrhosis). When this bottle runs out, I don’t think I’ll buy another, but it certainly did add a delicious earthy flavour to this passionfruit butter, which went down like a dream thanks to the delicious tangy passionfruits provided by our vine!

Ingredients:

• 6 ripe passionfruit: scoop out the whole inner flesh, seeds and all
• 2 organic eggs
• 2 tablespoons agave syrup or maple syrup
• 60 g of unsalted butter

Method:

To sterilise jars (this quantity filled two small 100mL jars):

• Heat oven to 100 degrees celcius
• Place your sterilisable jars and lids in a pot covered with water and gradually bring to the boil (do not drop them in boiling water, or they may crack)
• Transfer the jars and lids with tongs to a tray covered in baking paper
• Move to the oven and heat for 15 minutes to complete the sterilisation process

To prepare the passionfruit butter

• Mix the first three ingredients in a bowl over double boiler – I always use the same makeshift technique as I don’t have a double boiler (and don’t see the point of buying one as this works apparently just as well: half fill a frypan with water, place a heatproof ceramic bowl inside – voila!)

• Stir with whisk for 10-15 minutes until quite thick

• Stir in butter
• Remove jars from oven and pour the passionfruit butter into them
• It can be stored for up to a week in the fridge
• Delicious on sourdough bread, over a bowl of chopped fresh fruit, or with my low GI passionfruit muffins in place of icing (that recipe’s going to be my next post!)