Last week Priscilla wrote asking what I ate for dessert. It is my opinion that dessert is one of the areas where in order to live a healthy life you have to retrain yourself to think a completely different way - a paradigm shift, to use current terminology.

Refined sugar was the big "NO" food when I was in my health nut years. (Even though sugar is neutral for Type Os, I still believe that an excess of refined sugar contributes to a lot of health problems.) This was a big issue for me because in the Southern US where I grew up, dessert after every meal is a mark of hospitality. I tried fruit as a dessert, but frankly I like fruit better as a salad or a snack. I tried desserts with other sweeteners (fruit juice, honey, raw sugar), and some of them are delicious. But I finally decided that the best thing was to get away from the idea that dessert is part of a meal.

I have raised my kids that way. When they were little, I noticed that if we were away from home and they were expecting dessert, that they would eat less dinner. It was important to me that they ate an abundance of protein, fruit & vegetables. I didn't want them taking small servings of real food to "save room for dessert."

I bake cookies and cakes, but they are eaten as after school snacks, not dessert at the end of a meal. If we have company for dinner and I fix a dessert, we don't eat it at the end of the meal. We clear the table and visit for a while, and then I serve dessert.

Now that I am on the Type O diet, wheat has become the big "NO". Instead of substituting other sweeteners for sugar, I'm learning to substitute other flours for wheat. When I adjust a recipe, I find that I can cut the sugar by 1/3 and no one notices. I think that is better for all of us. I substitute butter or oil for shortening and margarine. Again I find that I can cut the fat in a recipe by 1/4 to 1/3 without anyone complaining. I find that for cookies, cakes, and breakfast breads; rye, spelt, and kamut flours can be substituted and the recipe turns out the same. Rice flour alone has a different texture, but I often mix rice with other flours. (Yeast breads are another matter, I'm still not happy with my results, but I found a couple of new recipes on the internet that I'll be trying.)

This week I baked gingerbread with Type A beneficial flours. My daughter has eaten it for both breakfast and snack two days in a row.