EXTREME CUISINE Far from being bad for you, many traditional sweet recipes form part of a balanced diet, writes Haydn Shaughnessy
The crèma catalana is a regional spin on the French crème brulée, except it uses much more sugar. Yes, those Mediterraneans know how to eat healthily.
Baklava is a Middle-Eastern pastry swimming in honey. Gulab julam is an Indian dessert that is little more than a ball of deep-fried sugar and highly condensed milk (milk in India, pre-refrigeration, had to be condensed in order to preserve it, and now the Indians are addicted to its fatty, sweet taste).
A crepe is the French dessert du jour, every day. Make a pancake and just add sugar, jam, marmalade or ice cream.
Nobody can claim the Catalans, French or Indians have an unhealthy cuisine, because even with their excesses, research bears out the generally health-enhancing nature of what French, Spanish and Indian people eat.
It could be that a few choice ingredients in their diets do all the good work. The French paradox, after all, says French people should be sick from all the fat they use, but they are not because they drink red wine as well.
What the French also do though is cook with appropriate fats (duck and goose fat are able to bear high-temperature frying better than most fats), whereas the English-speaking world graduated to margarines (and trans-fats) along with the Americans from the 1950s onwards.
Margarines were part of what was then, in the US, called the "prudent diet" (low-fat, high-carb). The French stuck to butter.
Many people have now replaced margarines (and butter) with olive oil. Olive oil use was promoted by the EU, which invested €2 billion a year in the expansion of the Mediterranean olive oil industry through the 1980s and 1990s.
The rise of olive oil parallels the rise of the Mediterranean diet as the model of healthy eating, although the studies that highlighted the Mediterranean diet's benefits were conducted by Americans.
The paradox of the Mediterranean diet is not only French. The American Heart Association has repeatedly pointed out that the countries of the Mediterranean consume as much as 45 per cent of their calories from fat, whereas science tells us about 30 per cent is the optimum. The science came to a bit of a standstill with the idea that, paradoxically, Mediterranean people eat plenty of fat, but live longer lives than Americans and north Europeans.
I first encountered the crèma catalana at the Hotel Figueras in Figueras, Catalonia. After a long, slow afternoon meal that I barely managed to cram in, I managed still to eat three crèma catalanas. It became known in my circle as crama catalana. Baklava likewise I've only eaten when already stuffed to the gills.
We enjoy our ice cream, fruit flans, strawberries and cream generally with an eye on the calorie counter, when in fact there must be something in there that is life-affirming and health-enhancing. It could be the very absence of guilt that makes a rich dessert pleasurable, and the presence of guilt that makes it a punishment.
The food industry has responded to our weight concerns by bringing out a selection of low-fat ice cream substitutes (based around low-fat yoghurt), desserts with sugar substitutes such as aspartame and low-carb cakes.
What is the health-conscious eater to do apart from abstain and act superior or only eat fresh fruit and be miserable? A little bit of research? Desserts are full of delicious fats - sweetened fats at that. But a closer look at some classic desserts shows that they also have a fair portion of beneficial ingredients or an historical relationship with food's survival role.
In hot India, condensing milk was a reliable way of preserving it beyond the few days that a yoghurt would survive. Yoghurt is typically a very low-fat milk product, whereas condensing milk preserved the fats.
In the Mediterranean, many desserts are made with crushed nuts that yield polyunsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats, which help transport fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin D around the body.
Pistachio nuts, a major ingredient in Middle-Eastern desserts, have been shown to reduce cholesterol. Honey has numerous health benefits. In fact, Baklava might well qualify as a superfood. As well as pistachio it is likely to contain almonds.
In Italy, the classic dessert is almond-based. Almonds, technically the fruit of the almond tree and a relative of the peach, are full of vitamin E and they lower cholesterol as well as relax the blood vessels.
Research in the US suggests that almonds account for much of the prolonged good health of Latin American immigrants. They're also virtually carbohydrate-free, hence a good base for cakes.
Macaroon, marzipan and nougat are all based on almonds.
Likewise, in Spain before the arrival of modern snacking products, any bar or cafe you happened upon would have been littered with the husks of sunflower seeds. Kids and adults alike chewed on a husk, nibbled on the seed and then spat.
Sunflower seeds are an important source of Omega-6 fatty acids.
The crepe, a symbol of France's informal dessert-snacking, was traditionally the galette, a Breton savoury made not from flour but from buckwheat. It has no gluten and has recently been used to produce gluten-free beer. It was traditionally used for disorders of the blood and blood vessels.
In Japan, sweet potatoes are used for desserts on important occasions. Sweet potatoes are the classic longevity food, promoting long life in the same way that fermented soy does. The Japanese combine sweet potato and green tea. The Portuguese combine it with honey and in the Alentejo region it is the mainstay of desserts.
There is no need to rush for the low-carb dessert, the low-fat cream or the cholesterol-lowering butter.
It might be wise not to overload our bodies with pure creams. Flour-based desserts will carry all the weight-gain risks of any grain-based diet. However, traditional dessert ingredients appear to have been selected for their wider health benefits.