By Valerie Orsoni

Valerie Orsoni

As a wellness and weight loss coach, I like everything natural…so today let’s search your pantry to find foods with gelatin. It will probably be more prevalent than you think: Gelatin is found in any yogurts that list “kosher gelatin” in the ingredients, the vast majority of products that are creamy but claim to be diet-friendly, some cakes and cookies, as well as ready-made meat marinades.

Did you know? Food gelatin is the settled remains of boiled tissue, cartilage, bone, and other animal flesh which we don’t always know the source of. After viewing food gelatin from this perspective, need I say more?

Kuquat jelly made with agar-agar

Is there a solution to replacing food gelatin? Well, your coach likes to say that there is a solution to everything And once again, we can turn to nature: our oceans provide the famous red algae, called Kanten in Japan, or Agar-Agar. Agar-Agar is considered the queen of gelling agents, and is completely odorless, colorless, and does not leave an after-taste, so you can use it for all your culinary needs.

To obtain Agar-Agar, purchase red algae from a health food store or national grocery chain and rinse the algae with water in order to withdraw the impurities from the sea as well as the salty taste. Once dried, place the algae in boiling water and it will transform into a mucilage which dehydrates and reduces to powder form.

Agar-Agar is really very simple to use; like food gelatin, its purpose in cooking, and in particular, pastry making, is to gel food into a convenient solid form for easy molding. The Agar-Agar is simply dissolved into a little liquid and then added to the rest of the ingredients.

Agar-Agar cannot be used cold; it is necessary to dilute it in hot water – higher than 85°C – in order to create a solid form. Once dissolved in hot liquid, the Agar-Agar can be combined with the rest of your ingredients!

Agar-Agar is naturally rich in calcium, phosphorus and iron, just like its source, the algae. It also has a weak glycemic index, i.e., it has little effect on your blood sugar level, and contains detoxifying properties, so it removes toxins from our bodies during digestion. Agar-Agar is a champion of our pantries!

Valerie is an entrepreneur, wellbeing expert, celebrity coach, author, contributing editor, mom and survivor. She created LeBootcamp, a fitness and weight-loss website. She is also the worldwide image of the Nintendo Wii My Body Coach, which launches in the US in spring 2010. She lives with her husband of 20 years and her teenager in the Silicon Valley.

Tags: Diet, Health

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 11:35 am and is filed under health&fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.