Knowledge Base > Deb Kennedy, PhD - Culinary Medicine: Ask Me Almost Anything

Deb Kennedy, PhD - Culinary Medicine: Ask Me Almost Anything
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Question:

I am particularly interested in cooking without flour or sugar. Bringing more flavor to vegetables and fish/chicken is of great interest to me. ?
— Elizabeth Anderson
Answer:
Bringing more flavor to vegetables and fish. Chicken is a great interest to me, Elizabeth, you need to join the Food Coach Academy. I'm telling you why. 'cause that's what we teach you, that's what we teach everybody. And not only you how to do that, but for you to teach others how to do it. So let's take one thing at a time. If you wanna cook without flour, if you wanna cook without processed flour or, um, I'm assuming you don't mean without grains. And if you're talking about processed flour, then what comes up for me is like if you wanna make a white sauce, you could use something else to make a white sauce like cauliflower or white beans or cashews to make a white sauce. So that's one way you can create white sauces without flour. If I'm thinking baking, 'cause I'm looking, where else would you be using flour when you're cooking and you're baking? Uh, switching to whole grain flour is another option. And there's all these fun things you can do with, you can make brownies with black beans, but I'm not sure you can make brownies with black beans without any flour in them. You'd have to look that up. So you're always looking for a substitution between what is a healthy form of sugar? Does it come with phytonutrients, fiber, vitamins and minerals? So your sugar substitutes are your fruit. It's also using culinary techniques like roasting to caramelize vegetables will bring out that sweetness. That's what you're looking for with sugar. With flour, you're looking at, for me as a nutritionist, I'd be interpreting that as I want you to use whole grains. So I'm not sure if your flour includes pastas and breads and crackers and all of that, or if you're cutting all flour out, that's a completely different thing. And if you're cutting all flour out, does that also include gluten-free flour? And if you're thinking gluten-free flowers are healthier than not, a gluten-free diet is, I'm gonna say it again if you've listened to me. A gluten-free diet is very, very low in fiber. It's not a healthful diet unless your body cannot withstand, cannot stand gluten. And you have this response. Um, but it's not for I wanna be healthy, I'm going gluten free. That's not how it works. And in terms of vegetables, there are great techniques. You learn how to use culinary techniques to make vegetables craveable. How you add acid to make vegetables craveable. You learn how to add salt throughout the cooking process so you use less of it. So you are using salt strategically. These are all methods when we're making vegetables taste really flavorful, adding herbs and spices to them as well with fish and chicken, which are of great interest to you. Again, you're talking about healthful sources of protein. There are different ways to cook fish without deep frying it. Same with chicken roasting, um, is gonna be a, a great friend of yours. Uh, poaching is another great helpful way to make them. If you're looking at decreasing the amount of meat protein and increasing plant protein, there's something called the protein swap we also talk about. And you learn about, so for instance, if you had ground chicken and you wanted to make a taco out of that, you would add a can of black beans to it and you get double the amount of filling, which is a really great tip on that as well.
