Dessert

Modern Desserts & Ancient Digestive Organs

Modern desserts have introduced a new level of sweet and gooey goodness to the food chain. Refined flours, refined sugars, and corn syrup were non-existant 150 years ago. The resulting exponential increase in consumption of sugar can completely overwhelm your digestive system - whose organs are ancient.

Desserts tend to be heavy, gooey, oily, sweet, cooling and difficult to digest. Anytime we can achieve yummy goodness while reducing these qualities has a tendency to make desserts healthier. For example, fruits satisfy sweet taste without the heaviness. For more healthy desserts, see the Seven Tips to Healthy Baking article below.

Why do People Crave Dessert?

One to two hours after a meal many people crave something sweet. The process of digestion creates an alkaline tide in the blood - detectable 2 hours after eating when the eyes sting slightly and the mind becomes irritable. The alkaline tide is the result of acid production in the stomach: if you make an acid in one else, you create an alkaline base somewhere else.

The alkaline tide occurs during the sour and salty phases of digestion. It makes you crave sweets. Unfortunately, indulging this sweet craving is unhealthy. Dessert mixed with a partially digested meal confuses output of stomach enzymes and delays release of food into the small intestine.