Paleo- and Primal-Friendly Desserts

For most North Americans, the traditional dessert for Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie, preferably with lots of whipped cream, thank you. Pumpkin isn't a terrible food for paleo or primal dieters until you start adding the condensed milk and sugar to make the pie filling. That's considerably more problematic for most than the crust.

But if you are going to create a Thanksgiving indulgence for carbohydrate-conscious Thankgiving dinner guests, consider making the crust with chopped nuts or almond flour instead of wheat flour. Everyone may like the taste better. 

Read More: Safe Starches On A Paleo Diet

As you will see in the recipes to which we link below, it's possible to make a tasty sweet filling with maple syrup and/or honey as the sweetener. Maple syrup and honey really do count as sugar, but they have their own virtues:

• Maple syrup has a glycemic index of 54, which is about half that of regular sugar. It also contains calcium, iron, and manganese, and is relatively low in fructose.

• Raw honey has a glycemic index of 30, largely due to the fact that the bee's digestive process turns other sugars into fructose and dextrose. The fructose in honey can actually be beneficial, stimulating your liver to process other sugars, as long as you don't consume more than about 10 grams. That allows you to eat one large piece (maybe 1/6 rather than 1/8) of a honey-sweetened pie, but just one, sorry.

And what about the rest of the traditional Thanksgiving meal?

Here are some low-carb fixes that everyone at the table may enjoy:

• Serve your appetizers on crackers made with almond flour. Or serve stuffed mushrooms.

• Make a fruit tray with apples and and Asian pear slices served with dried cranberries, dried cherries, nuts, and plantain chips.

• Serve an antipasto tray with salami, mozzarella, sliced red peppers, olives, pickles, onions, and cucumbers.

• Eat the same salad every year? Try do it yourself primal-friendly salad dressings from Mark Sisson that we have linked below.

• Make a topping for sweet potato casserole from coconut, coconut oil, cinnamon, and maple syrup, with chopped walnuts for crunch.

• Serve lingonberries with or instead of cranberries. They have an interesting flavor that doesn't require as much help from sugar.

• Use cauliflower (be sure to remove any green leaves before boiling) as a substitute for potatoes or rice.

• Make liberal use of coconut and nuts in your desserts. Coconut macaroons are relatively low-carb and paleo- and primal-friendly.