About a month ago, I went to the doctor and had some bloodwork done. The thing I was concerned about (blood hemoglobin) was fine, but the my blood sugar level had started creeping up again, from an A1C of 5.7 to 5.9. (Considering what's been happening in our country for the past nine months, I'd guess the culprit is probably stress, but short of avoiding the news completely, there's not much I can do about that.) My doctor's offhand advice was to "cut sugar and carbs," but if he'd taken a look at my medical records, he'd have seen that I tried that a couple of years ago and it was an epic fail. So I concluded it would once again be up to me to find a solution myself.
After hunting around on the Internet and even going so far as to consult ChatGPT (and verify that what it told me was true, since you can't count on that), I decided to start with a couple of small hacks that had some solid data behind them and didn't look too difficult:
1. Walking right after meals, especially high-carb ones, and
2. Adding more protein to meals and snacks.
The first is simple enough. Even if I'm not fully dressed or the weather is uncongenial, I can just step into the office for a quick session of walk and watch. But the second is trickier. Since breakfast is usually the carb-heaviest meal of the day, I've started adding a dozen almonds to accompany my toast and cocoa. That adds about 3 grams of protein to the meal, bringing the total up to about 16 grams. But that's still well short of the 20 to 25 grams ChatGPT said would be ideal. (According to Cleveland Clinic, that's kind of on the high side for someone my size, but it's not enough to do harm.)
So when I spotted a two-pound bag of hemp hearts on a trip to Costco today, something rang a little bell. I checked the nutrition info and found that just two tablespoons of these puppies have a whopping 10 grams of protein, along with significant doses of iron (the thing that sent me to the doctor in the first place) and magnesium. I wasn't sure how I'd use them, but I decided to hazard $13.50 on the purchase and figure it out once I got them home.
Brian and I started out by opening the bag and nibbling one hemp heart each. They had a strong, nutty, somewhat grassy flavor with a faint bitter undertone—not unpleasant, but definitely not something that would work with every kind of food. Brian also tried sprinkling a few in a little cup of his homemade granola and found they harmonized with it pretty well. He considered substituting them for the flaxseed he normally uses in that recipe, but since they're considerably more expensive ($6.75 per pound as opposed to about two bucks), it didn't seem worth it. He's the main consumer of the granola anyway, so making this swap wouldn't help me much.
I then decided to try something a little more ambitious: homemade hemp milk. I found a simple recipe at The Minimalist Baker that called for a half-cup of hemp hearts blended in a high-speed blender with three to four cups of water and a pinch of salt, plus some optional add-ins for sweetness and flavor. I did some back-of-the-envelope (actually, margin-of-the-crossword-puzzle) calculations and found that if I used four cups of water, this hemp milk would have 10 grams of protein per cup, beating out the 7 grams in my Lidl soy milk. However, it would also be significantly pricier: about $3.60 per half gallon, even with no add-ins, as opposed to the $2.75 we pay at Lidl. However, when I compared it to my current coffee creamer, a half-and-half blend of Trader Joe's coconut creamer and Lidl soymilk, it looked much better. Assuming I used only three cups of water to make a thicker milk, it would cost only $1.20 per pint, as compared to $1.34 for the coconut-soy mixture. And it would have about 3.3 grams of protein in a quarter-cup serving, rather than just under half a gram.
The question, though, was how it would taste. To find out, I mixed up a quarter-sized batch in our little Magic Bullet blender. I used the smaller volume of water and left out the sweetener and vanilla, figuring I could always adjust it from there. I started by pulsing the hemp seeds by themselves to turn them into powder, then added the water and blended it for about a minute as the recipe directed. The mixture was a bit grainy, but I didn't bother straining it; I just dipped a spoon in and gave it a taste. In liquid form, that nutty, grassy flavor was very pronounced, and I had a hard time imagining it as a real substitute for milk. I then tried sweetening it with maple syrup and adding a few drops of vanilla to see if that would soften the taste. The answer: not appreciably. Like the hemp hearts themselves, it wasn't exactly unpleasant, but it was quite strong, and I seriously doubted it would blend at all well with coffee. Brian also tasted it and thought it might be compatible with a cup of cocoa, but given that I found the nutty flavor of Aldi almond milk too strong for that purpose, I couldn't imagine this much stronger-tasting mixture being suitable.But we're not out of ideas yet. For our next experiment, Brian plans to try adding some hemp hearts to his Basic Brown Bread recipe. He's already modified it somewhat from the original by adding a quarter-cup of flaxseed to give it a little boost of fiber and healthy fats; swapping that out for hemp hearts will up the fiber still more, along with the protein. Spread across two whole loaves, the added protein won't amount to much per slice, but every little bit helps.
I also tried, just for the hell of it, sprinkling a pinch of hemp hearts over the tuna casserole we had for dinner tonight, and I found that their taste blended quite seamlessly with the fairly strong flavors of tuna and mushrooms. Based on that experiment, these hemp hearts may prove more useful as an add-in for savory dishes rather than sweet ones. I'll continue playing around with them over the coming weeks and see what works.