Skinnybik

History

Australians love biscuits and cookies. About half the population eat them on a weekly basis, especially with tea or coffee. Nutritionists advise Australians to avoid them because they are mostly full of refined sugar and starch, bad fats and too low in fibre and protein.

Gluten free cookies can be particularly unhealthy due to the highly processed starchy high GI nutrient poor flours made from rice, potato and tapioca.

But why can’t biscuits be healthy?

My patients love biscuits and many refuse to give them up.

I was challenged by one of my patients (who was coeliac, overweight and had type 1 diabetes!)  to develop a healthy biscuit range as the “Nutrition expert”.   She said to me “make sure they are also tasty and filling!”

Lupin to the rescue!  Lupin flour is gluten free and is very high in protein (40%) and fibre (30%) and very low in carbs.  Using this flour in GF foods dramatically improves their nutritional profile and studies have shown that lupin enriched foods may reduce hunger, blood sugars, blood cholesterol and blood pressure.  Perfect!

I took on the challenge and developed a range of cookies using lupin flour (for gluten free) and wholemeal spelt/oat bran/rice bran (for low fodmap).  The result was astonishing – my cookies had 400% more fibre, half the refined carbs/sugar, double the protein, 80% less saturated fat than plain sweet biscuits and only 52 calories each (per 14g) with a delicious chewy scone-like texture.  They are the only cookies on the market with a 4.5 health star rating!

Then I had to test them on my patients. Would they like them?  Would they use them as a healthy sweet snack in place of other less healthy sweet cookies and indulgences?

Would they help reduce hunger between meals?  Would they be helpful for weight management?

After 7 years of testing on thousands of patients I can confidently say that all 3 flavours are very popular.

The overwhelming feedback is that they are a guilt free better for you low sugar snack that STOPS HUNGER and with little impact on blood sugars.

Many of my patients on weight loss programs have lost weight whilst eating up to 4 Skinnybik cookies a day!

Unlike other reduced carb biscuits, Skinnybik cookies do not have laxative sweeteners so do not cause bloating and diarrhoea.

Fun fact:  The famous Greek Papadopoulos biscuits (exported to 40 countries) originated in Constantinople in the early 1920s by Evangelos Papadopoulos…who was the first cousin of my maternal grandmother Hariklia Christidou-Ioannidou! So yes..biscuits are in my DNA!