Natural Sweetness

Where possible it is always preferable to rely on the natural sweetness of foods rather than having to add sugar or artificial sweeteners. Mixing naturally sweet fruit or vegetables into cakes and muesli bars means that you can greatly reduce the amount of refined sugar that you would normally add.

Fruit and vegetables not only add sweetness, they are also rich in vitamins, minerals and much-needed fibre for our diets. A lot of the recipes in this book use dates, figs and bananas (although, dried fruits are very high in sugar so be wary of eating these too often) as well as vegetables such as carrots, beetroot and sweet potatoes. Sometimes adding spices can also help in giving a ‘sweet’ taste – cinnamon and vanilla are good for this, plus cinnamon is also effective in controlling blood sugar and reducing the risk for developing type 2 diabetes, so this spice is doubly useful! So what are the alternatives instead of sugar? Here and on the next pages are a few of the ‘natural’ options available.