Who doesn’t like a good dessert or cake with their coffee, as a snack or after a meal? The taste, smell and appearance of desserts make them irresistible and a sensorial pleasure hard to refuse!
Dieting or adhering to a healthy diet is not always an easy task. Some people find it very difficult to give up some culinary pleasures that are not beneficial to the body, often caused by their addiction to sugar or salt.
But it doesn’t always have to be this way. The solution for those who seek to be healthier, but don’t want to give up their favorite sweets, is functional confectionery.
What is Functional Confectionery?
The main objective of functional confectionery is to add to the recipes, ingredients with properties that bring some benefit to health beyond their basic functions like, for example, to be a source of energy. The idea is to make the body “function” better. In functional confectionery, we want to make desserts with nutritious ingredients instead of empty calories that only harm our bodies, or proteins that are more difficult to digest or ingredients that can be toxic and inflammatory.
But besides identifying the right ingredients, it is also necessary to know how to manipulate them so that during the preparation process the nutritional properties of the food are preserved and maximized, ensuring physiological and metabolic effects on the body.
The bioactive compounds present in the functional foods are responsible for maintaining the health of individuals, preventing and treating diseases, such as: antioxidants, fiber, minerals, vitamins, good fats, prebiotics and probiotics.
But functional confectionery is not just that.
After all, when we eat a dessert we expect it to be tasty.
It is also given much importance to the flavor and texture of the final product. The idea that healthy food tastes weird or bad, prevailed for a long time.
Luckily there has been a mentality shift in society – more and more the demand for healthy products and healthier lifestyles increases. This has led to more innovation and diversity of healthy recipes and thus a development and improvement of flavors and consistencies in this field as well.
Does Functional Confectionery Taste Different?
Functional confectionery seeks versions of traditional sweets and recipes – which often bring back good memories – substituting and incorporating their own ingredients that maintain the characteristics similar to the original ones.
These products are often consumed during dietary re-education, lifestyle changes, or for some restriction, where traditional products need to be avoided. For me, functional confectionery is precisely this: the union between health and the pleasure of eating well!
Functional confectionery does not include, for instance, white sugar, which is replaced by more natural alternatives, such as demerara sugar, coconut sugar or xylitol, which do not cause glycemic peaks.
In addition, it is also free of trans fats, dyes and is rich in fiber, nutrients, collagen, and in some cases even protein.
The type of flours that are used in functional confectionery also have health benefits, because they are mostly whole grain. Many of these flours can be used for people with allergies or more serious health problems, such as gluten intolerance or celiac disease.
Why Should You Shift To Functional Confectionery?
If you can make the same cake or dessert in it’s healthy version, without losing flavor and consistency, why would you keep making them with lower quality ingredients and harm your health and the health of your kids and family?
Do you agree with me? Please share your thoughts, insights and experiences with me/us, writing them in the comments section down below! I would love to hear from you!
Stay healthy and have a sweet day!
Leonor