Contemplating Pie Crusts

Today while at a WeightWatchers meeting someone asked me if I knew of a low point pie crust.

Well, I did some research and the first thing I did was find a recipe for a regular ole pie crust.  The ingredients within the recipe that would garner points are 2 1/2 cups of white flour (22 points), one cup of butter (48 points) and a tsp. of sugar (.5 points).  The other ingredients are ice water and salt, so they don't count as points.  So the grand total for this pie crust is 70.5 points.  That is 8.8 points per serving with 8 servings.  INSANE!  I am confused as to how this could be so high.  But, I input all the ingredients into the WW website point counter and these are the results.

I took this crust recipe from a pie recipe I found in Dr. Joel Fuhrman's "Eat for Health". 
Eat For Health, Book 2 (2)

Bluevado Pie

Ingredients for the crust:
10 fresh pitted dates, not dried
1 1/2 cups of Familia, original swiss baby muesli (no sugar added)

Ingredients for filling:
10 ounces of frozen blueberries
10 pitted dates, chopped
4-5 bananas
1 Haas Avocado
1 tsp. unsweetened shredded coconut.

So basically, you take the crust ingredients and blend them together with a food processor.  Then press them into the pie pan to make a crust.

For the filling:
Blend all the ingredients in a high powered blender or food processor (except the coconut) and then pour it into the pie crust.  Sprinkle with the coconut, cover it, and freeze it for at least 3 hours before you serve it.

This entire recipe makes 8 servings at about 5.2 points per serving.  That is the entire pie.  The crust by itself is 12 points total, and 1.5 points per serving.

For my non-Weightwatcher readers here are the stats per serving:

264,2 Calories
5.8g Fat
4.3g Protein
53.2 Carbs
13.6mg Sodium

Now, I know you can't use this crust for everything.  It's best to use it in place of a graham cracker crust.  I checked out Keebler's Graham Cracker Crust and it is 3 points per serving (8 servings).  That is double the Fuhrman crust and it doesn't pack nearly the same punch in nutrients that the date/cereal crust does.

These are some nice fresh medjool dates.  I know that I have found those at Giant by my house, and area healthfood stores.  You can call your grocery store ahead of time and inquire as to whether or not they carry these dates.

It's not just the points, the fats, the calories and sugars you should look at here though.  It is also the nutrients.  Dates have some nice attributes.  Want to know what?  Check out this link:

http://www.weight-loss-advisor.com/weightlossarticles/date-nutrition.htm

And then there are the ingredients in the cereal in this crust recipe:

oat flakes
wholemeal flour (wheat, rye and barley)
dried bananas
10.45% dried apples
millet flakes
Vitamin B1 (thiamin)

No sugar, no butter, no white flour.  Not bad.  You don't necessarily have to use this particular cereal either.  You can try different cereal that are no sugar added.  Since this is a baby cereal, I wouldn't be surprised if most baby cereals in the supermarket would work for this recipe.

I did the math for this cereal, which may be easier to find in your grocery store.

With this cereal, your points are 10 per crust, so 1.25 points per serving if you do 8 servings!

So, there is my input on finding a healthier crust.  I take no credit.  It is all Dr. Joel Fuhrman!