How to Navigate Easter (Without OD'ing on Sugar)

How to Navigate Easter
(Without OD'ing on Sugar)
By Sarah Wilson

If you've ever wondered if you could possibly get through Easter without eating chocolate…read on!

Sarah Wilson, TV presenter, journalist, blogger and author of I Quit Sugar has some tips on how to navigate Easter without going nuts on sugar.

First, some chocolate thinkings… and some good news
Since I've been asked this a lot, I'll share where I'm at with chocolate. I love the stuff. Like, really love the stuff. It makes me teary with appreciation and gratitude and astonishment that something can just (not just taste but) feel so viscerally good.

But I do chocolate differently now.

I eat raw cacao a lot more…see below for some ideas. Or my I Quit Sugar book for recipe suggestions. Raw cacao is the unheated, less processed version of cocoa (the stuff that most chocolate is made from). When people talk about chocolate being a high source of antioxidants and magnesium…they're talking about the raw stuff; heating diminishes a lot of the properties. Makes sense. I use Loving Earth's raw organic cacao…you can buy it here.
I eat a few squares of the commercial 85 per cent cocoa stuff. Or, sometimes, the 70 per cent stuff. In a small serve (three big squares or so), that's about 1.5 (or three) teaspoons of sugar. I weigh it up. I would rather eat great fats and proteins and veggies all day, plus some chocolate, than negotiate over a fruit salad or some tomato sauce on a burger. I choose, at times, to get my sugar through a small amount of sugar.
But I observe myself. I can tend to blow out and want to scoff the whole block. I have to be mindful. But this in itself is a good thing. As I bang on and on and on about.

After being off sugar some time, this is possible. Some no-sugar peeps don't advise this.
In the IQS ebook, I lament that there really ain't any commercial chocolate bars out there using a safe sugar alternative, like glucose, rice malt syrup, xylitol or stevia. Instead the sugar free chocolates use sugar alcohols – like maltitol – and agave, both of which should be avoided. However, since then I've struck some luck…read on…

Tips for Easter

Easy egg treats: mix 5 tablespoons of coconut oil (melted) with 3 tablespoons of raw cacao powder (more or less depending on taste) and 3 tablespoons of hazelnut meal and pour into Easter egg molds (the kind that come as a tray of indented shapes), or mini cupcake patties (the ones used for making chocolates). Place in fridge for an hour.
How about…how to make an egg love heart? (see picture) Oh my. Serve on Easter morning for "they'll never know all the other kids are having chocolate confection" fun.

For just some plain old chocolate ideas, while I'm here:

David Gillespie has great chocolate ice cream and chocolate gelato recipes in The Sweet Poison Quit Plan. Just saying.
Good news: I found chocolate bars from Plamil Foods…organic chocolate sweetened with rice malt sugar, containing 3.8g sugar per 100g. The ingredients in this organic bar: Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Butter, Dehydrated Rice Syrup, Soya flour, Emulsifier: Sunflower Lecithin. You can buy them online from Vegan Perfection.
I'm also a big fan of Jemma's Naked Treaties chocolates. Jemma's Superfood Truffle and coconut bar are sweetened, but only minimally. Jemma hand makes them using 100% raw products. And blesses her ingredients each morning before she starts "cooking". She tells me each ball contains one gram of fructose (I'm guessing less than 1/3 tsp of sugar). You can buy them direct from her shop in Byron, at a stack of outlets around the country.
This is a simple series of videos for making and painting Easter egg shells.
And Martha Stewart gives the Easter craft thing a click here.
And if you're after sugar free, gluten free and vegan hot cross buns…you're in luck. Try this recipe. Again, replace the honey with rice malt syrup.

I sincerely hope this paves a path for you! SW.

To make comments or share ideas go to Sarah's full article on How to Navigate Easter – click here. You can also join Sarah's I Quit Sugar page on Facebook here.