[cakerookie]

David in your research for your book what was the one ingredient that you found had a more diverse range of substitues than the rest? Is there one ingredient that stands out in your mind?

[David Joachim]

Sugar has the most substitutes, followed by butter. There are so many types of sugar, including cane varieties (granulated, light brown, dark brown, turbinado or raw sugar, Sucanat, and different degrees of coarseness within cane sugars such as powdered confectioner's or icing sugar, medium superfine or bar sugar, coarse or decorating sugar, and rock or Chinese sugar), plus sugars from other sources like beet sugar, palm sugar, date sugar, maple sugar, as well as other sweeteners that can stand in for sugar such as honey, molassess, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, barley malt syrup, stevia, fructose, and, of course the artificial sweeteners like Nutrasweet, Sweet and Low, Splenda, DiabetiSweet, etc.

I suspect that sugars are so diverse because they are so crucial to the survival of living organisms. No wonder we love the taste of sweets.

[travisbickle]

Hello David, nice to have you among us. My question revolves around tasty and nutitious alternatives to animal protien. I know soy products are often used, but I find them to be inferior to the real thing when it comes to how soy absorbs spice and aromatics as oppossed to how well animal protein embraces it. Do you know of other alternatives that can rival real meat?

[David Joachim]

Nothing is exactly like animal muscle. You can replace one animal muscle for another with varying degrees of similitude, but once you switch to the plant world, some basic components of meat are missing: fat, collagen, sinew, and cholesterol, for instance. (There is no cholesterol in plants.) The only plant food I've found that can come even close to meat is wheat gluten, which can be manipulated to mimick the density and chewiness of meat. It also absorbs flavors well.