Healthy Sweets Only

I thought a picture in your mind might be helpful: I took a picture of the variety of sweets that I consider healthy. 

There are all kinds of nuts in the background because nuts have the healthy unsaturated fats. In the middle we have dried apples and bananachips though bananachips are rather an exeption because they they are made with a lot of added fat and sugars (often from honey). Moreover, there is dark chocolate: 99% cacao and organic on the left (and that is really not sweets anymore) and 81% on the right which I really like.

If you want to buy all those nice things it might me adviseable to start looking in a healthy food shop. If you buy them there you can be sure that you buy good stuff without refined sugar. But there are also many supermarkets which have a quite wide range of those good sweets. 

On the other hand, I (running rat's dad) make the dried apples myself. It's easy and you know exactly what they contain. Moreover, they taste just like the ones you just bought for a lot more money than they are worth. It might be as easy to make bananachips but I didn't try (yet).  I used to buy them in a pet shop for my pets until I realized how tasty they were.

When it comes to the chocolate I often buy them in the shop I work in though it is not the same quality than in the healthy food shop. However, it is convenient and cheap.

Although this is an okay range already I still look for other things I might like. I didn't try dates, figs and a lot of other dried fruit yet. But often they do contain stuff I don't want in my food like sorbic acid, sulphur dioxide or other sulphides. These substances are used as antioxidants. Citric acid does the same job though. It is found in limes and lemons. But you an eat the apples just as well if they are not treated with lemon or lime juice. They do get a slightly brown then.

So if you also want to cut back on sweets during christmas, too, try dried fruit and nuts. They are perfect substitutes. I already feel lighter (and lost a whole pound)!