Recipe: Fructose-Free Swedish Snowball Cookies // Adapted Family Recipe

I am becoming more contentious about my sugar intake to reduce my inflammation.

Despite my desire to fight inflammation and generally be more aware of the effects sugar (fructose) has on my body, it has been hard getting through the holiday season without my holiday go to treats. One treat in particular has been hard to go without: Swedish Snowball cookies. These cookies consist of powdered sugar, SO MUCH BUTTER, walnuts, flour, and really nut much else. They are a tradition in my family and are really only made once a year during the holiday season. 

A christmas without Swedish Snowballs seemed impossible. So, in an effort to think outside of the box, I decided to purchase Dextrose. Dextrose is also called d-glucose and is what our body converts in to energy. So, unlike fructose or sucrose (table sugar usually used in baking), it is not solely absorbed by the liver. 

I did have to make a few adaptations because Dextrose absorbs moisture in a different way than sugar does. 

Ingredients:

1 Pound Butter (2 cups)

1 Cup sifted Dextrose

2 teaspoon vanilla extract 

1/3 Cup almond milk 

4 Cups unsifted flour

1 1/2 Cups chopped walnuts

Note: These directions can be made VEGAN by replacing the pound of butter with a pound of Earth Balance or other butter replacement. 

Directions:
1. To begin, pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees. Then use your hand or stand mixer to mix together the pound of butter and cup of sifted Dextrose.

2. Add in the vanilla extract. 

3. Slowly add in the 4 cups of flour. Mix until one solid ball of dough. 

4. If the dough isn't solidifying in to one whole unit, slowly add in the 1/3 cup almond milk.

5. Chop up walnuts.  

6. Add chopped walnuts into the dough until they are evenly distributed.

7. Once the dough is fully incorporated, roll dough in to balls that are approximately one inch in diameter. 

8. Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes.

9. Let cookies cool for about half an hour or until they are not warm to the touch. 

10. Once cookies are cool, roll them in Dextrose to make them look like they are covered in snow!

11. Enjoy!

I hope that you enjoy this recipe and that it helps you get through the holiday season! Adapting this family recipe has really helped me make the holidays better and made me feel like I wasn't missing out on my favorite holiday treat. I like knowing that though there is still a lot of butter and flour in them (and thus, I should still consume them in moderation, at least I know that the sugar I am consuming in the form of Dextrose/Glucose is giving me energy rather than just feeding my sugar addiction and inflammation. Despite the fact that these cookies turned out deliciously, they were nowhere near as sweet as traditional Swedish Snowballs. Though I love eating and enjoying them, I haven't felt an uncontrollable urge to eat all of them at once. 

***Warning: Just because these are made out of all healthy whole foods and natural sugars, does not mean you should eat a crazy ton of them. Just like with regular cookies, you should eat them in moderation. Enjoy!

Sugar Confusion

There are three primary forms of sugar:

1. Glucose 
2. Galactose
3. Fructose

These three forms of sugar are not interchangeable. Each is used by the body differently. Some forms of sugar are our life force energy and others are considered by our body to be tantamount to poison. I'm going to try to quickly sum up how each form of sugar works within our body:

1. Glucose
• Glucose is the energy of life. Almost all living plants and creatures run on glucose. Glucose is made through the process of photosynthesis. It is what is found in starch and when it breaks down, it can be burned down as energy by pretty much every cell in our body. Glucose consists of two elements that mirror each other, these elements are called L-Glucose and D-Glucose. Dextrose is another name for D-Glucose. 
2. Galactose
• Galactose is only found in milk sugar. It is almost instantly turned by our liver in to Glucose. 
3. Fructose
• Fructose is rarely converted in to glucose. It is seen by our body as extraneous and is regularly converted in to liver fat. 
• Unless we are an extreme athlete (think an olympian) or if we are literally starving, our fructose remains solely as liver fat. If you are an olympian, extreme athlete, or literally starving, then your body may convert fructose in to glycogen (liver starch) which can be fished out of your liver if your body desperately needs glucose. This rarely happens. "Chronic and excess alcohol or fructose exposure both cause fatty liver disease, which drives the pathologic process of insulin resistance, and causes the same chronic diseases - obesity, heart disease, and diabetes." 

There is much confusion over the idea that Fructose is bad for us. Because many of us grew up being told that "an apple a day will keep the doctor away," we are not willing to think of fructose as potentially negative. We associate fructose specifically with fruit and we associate fruit with health. When we eat fruit, our body consumes not only fructose, but also fiber. The fiber in fruit helps limit the absorption of fructose. When you refine sugar (which pretty much means that you remove the fiber from the sugar), you absorb the sugar (fructose) all immediately. Your liver becomes overloaded with fructose and ends up converting it in to liver fat. This is why consumption of straight fructose without fiber (fruit juice, soda, honey, agave, sucrose - the combination of glucose and fructose, or generally any time that the naturally occurring fibers that were attached to the fructose are gone) causes us to gain liver fat.  

The more fructose we consume, the harder our body has to work. When we eat too much sugar (read - fructose), our immune cells secret an inflammatory messenger called a cytokines. When cytokines are excreted, our bodies become inflamed. As someone with an autoimmune arthritis who is fighting inflammation constantly, I now monitor my sugar consumption for this reason. 

Delicious Arthritis Step #1: Cut Out Added Sugars

Sugar triggers inflammation. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition warns that process sugars trigger the release of inflammatory messengers called cytokines.  

Let me break it down for you. There are basically two types of sugars:

1. Natural sugars - These are foods that naturally contain sugar, along with vitamins, minerals, and fiber. These are foods like dairy products (which I personally can’t eat), vegetables, and fruits. These are fructose, glucose/dextrose, and galactose. The white table sugar we are all used to is sucrose; a combination of fructose and glucose.
2. Added sugars - These are foods that have sugar added in, on top of their natural sugars. These are included in many processed foods, such as soft drinks and candies. These foods are high in sugar but have very low levels of vitamins, minerals, or fiber. Unfortunately, added sugars seem to be in almost everything.

Though some people worry about ALL sugars, I know that cutting out sugars entirely would be impossible for me, so I’m just trying to minimize how much added sugars I intake.

How I began cutting out added sugar: 

1. I began reading nutrition labels. 
• 4 grams of sugar = 1 teaspoon
• The daily recommended amount of sugar for women = 20 grams (5 teaspoons)
• The daily recommended amount of sugar for men = 36 grams (9 teaspoons)
• The daily recommended amount of sugar for children = 12 grams (3 teaspoons)
2. I cut out any sweetened drinks.
• If I drank one can of soda a day (which contain approximately 44 grams of sugar each) for a whole year, that would equal 83.6 CUPS of added sugar per year.
• Even though natural fruit are okay, I cut out most fruit juices as well.
3. I cut out added “healthy sugars” too. All sugars are sugars, just because one is processes more than another doesn't take way from the fact that you're still adding in extra sugar that was not pre-existing, in to your meal. The added "healthy sugars" that I'm referring to are:
• Agave nectar
• Raw honey
• Raw sugar
• Molasses
• Maple syrup
• Coconut palm sugar
4. Because sugar seems to be added to EVERYTHING I am making most of my foods and sticking with a primarily paleo & clean eating diet. I eat a lot of vegetables, eggs, lean meats, and olive oil. I use loads of spices and I promise you that I do not eat boring food! If I am going to restrict my eating so much, it better as hell taste good!
5. I cut out most desserts. Even though I initially felt like this was a fate worse than death, I have found a way to still have some desserts that are VERY LOW in added sugars and I have some general rules about the desserts I do eat:
• I will not eat chocolate that is below 80% cocoa. In addition to there being less sugar added in the more cocoa there is, I find that I am more satisfied with smaller amounts of chocolate because the small amounts that I get are so intensely chocolatey.
• I am beginning to learn how to make sugar free desserts. (I’ll be sharing some awesome recipes soon!)

Lets not lie to ourselves: we love sugar. For most of us, a treat means a freshly baked batch of cookies, a rarely indulged in candy bar, or even a fancy cocktail drink. This doesn’t have to be the absolute end of those treats, but it does need to be a re-framing of how we think of treating ourselves. The worst part about added sugar is that it seems to be in EVERYTHING. Cutting out added sugar can seem really intimidating. The thing that has gotten me through it though is to know that on the rare occasions that I do have sugar, I can definitely feel the difference. My arthritis flares up and that is certainly not a treat. Treating myself now means doing things that make me feel good, not just in the moment, but in the future as well.

***Confession: Because I'm not perfect and I am still working towards being my best inflammation fighting self, I still allow myself sugar one day a week. I call it Celebration Saturday and on that day I can have some - though still not an excessive amount of - sugar. Full disclosure though, I almost always regret it because the flare ups that follow are never fun.

Additional Resources on SUGAR:

• If you haven't yet watched Fed Up (on Netflix) or That Sugar Film, you definitely should.
• If you're having a hard time finding That Sugar Film then check out this clip about breakfast and this clip about Jamba Juice.
• Take a moment to check out I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson.
• You can also check out Jamie Oliver's TED talk which not only talks about teaching children about the food that they eat, but also talks about how much sugar children are consuming in America and Britain.
• Or read this article about 11 Ways Sugar Messes With Your Health.