Healthy banana muffins? Using non-sugar sweetener in Singapore

I must preface that I am neither a dietitian nor a chef. This banana muffin recipe is developed entirely as an alternative to sweets, by me as a chiropractor, for my clients. There are two things that I wish to achieve: (1) encourage my clients to consider making their own food and (2) show that healthier food doesn’t have to taste bad. In today’s post, I will share my thoughts about healthy eating, my process in developing this recipe, and the final (yet not quite perfect) recipe.

What is dieting?

Dieting is not really just about losing weight. It’s about eating food in an intentional way to achieve a specific outcome. Sure, it could be weight loss but could also be weight gain (e.g., bulking). For others, it could be to prevent or to manage specific conditions such as diabetes and obesity.

Dieting for chronic pain

Some people would avoid inflammatory foods and adopt a gut-friendly diet to help manage their chronic pain. Sugar has been identified as pro-inflammatory and has been also associated with chronic pain.

In a study 2020 involving 4,123 participants, those who consumed the most sugar were 41% more likely to experience spinal pain.

Sugar aside, obesity  or overweightness is also strongly linked to chronic pain. For some of my clients, their recovery from chronic would involve working towards a healthier weight or body fat percentage range.

Let’s be real. Chiropractic adjustments or any form of manual therapy is not going to get you long-term results. Exercise is first-line treatment for chronic pain. However, the best results still come from addressing our body as a whole. This often involves adopting a healthier lifestyle.

Health is not an absence of disease but a state of complete well-being!

As a chiropractor, I am in deeply invested in helping my clients adopt health habits. In doing so, I aim to help my clients help themselves find freedom from pain.

Choosing healthier foods

Everyone knows that sustainable change gives you the best results in the longer term. People have started referring to things like body weight as vanity matrix. Losing a lot of a weight in a very short time sounds impressive and may even stroke our egos a little, but we now know that body weight alone is not an indicator of good health or a successful weight loss.

The solution is to dig deeper. Instead of focusing on addressing matrixes such as body weight or body fat percentage, people look to changing behaviour.

Choosing healthier food is something that is talked about a lot. In Singapore, the Healthier Choice Symbol (HCS) are found in healthier foods (e.g., higher fibre, lower saturated fat, sodium, etc). All drinks sold in Singapore also comes with a Nutri-Grade label to help Singaporeans choose beverages with lower sugar and saturated fat content.

I will discuss how the same principle can also be used in food preparation with the banana muffin as an example.

Swaps and substitutions to consider for baking

I spent over a year working on this recipe. Frankly, I don’t remember the exact quantity of each ingredients that I swapped out or the starting recipe that I used. Sally’s Quick and Easy Banana Muffins came up a lot as I looked at regular recipes. So, I will use hers as a benchmark on what goes into a regular banana muffin.

In her recipe, she used all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, bananas, butter, sugar, egg, and milk. It sounds pretty much like what I would expect in a regular muffin.

In my recipe, I made the following swaps and substitutions:

At this point, I would like to clarify that foods that were swapped out for healthier options are not necessarily unhealthy. Having a good relationship with food is important.

Less sugar is better but no need to avoid altogether

For example, we don’t need to avoid consuming sugar in its entirely. Some sugar, for most of us, is okay. Health Promotion Board and World Health Organization recommend limiting our sugar intake to less than 10% of our daily energy intake.

Sounds reasonable right? This works out to 50g for an average person’s diet. Approximately 10 teaspoons or four tablespoons. If you were to use Sally’s recipe (135g of sugar), eating one muffin (13.5g) will take up 27% of your daily sugar limit.

If you do not consume added sugar in your daily life (e.g., black coffee), you most certainly can afford eating one, two or even three of Sally’s regular banana muffins.

Do note that added sugar comes in many forms. Sometimes less obvious but still counts towards your daily intake. Sugar can be found in foods such as char siew, chee cheong fun, and even mee siam! Did you know the sugar content in mee siam is equivalent to a can of coke? I didn’t.

Singaporeans consume too much sugar!

I don’t want to compare how much sugar we consume as a nation compared to other countries, because it’s simply not relevant on an individual level. I would think we do better than most countries but still above the recommended amount. As such, we should focus on us and what we can do to help ourselves.

On average, Singaporeans consume about 12 teaspoons of sugar per day. Two teaspoons don’t sound like much, but it is 20% more than the upper limit recommendation.

With this in mind, I have to cut out sugar from my recipe. Because sugar is associated with chronic pain, sugar is associated with obesity which is associated with chronic pain, Singaporeans on the whole consumes too much sugar.

My solution to this is monk fruit sweetener.

Monk fruit sweetener as sugar substitute

This is the first time I have tasted and used monk fruit sweetener in my recipe. I chose it because it’s made from a Luo Han Guo (罗汉果), which is something a lot of Singaporean Chinese are familiar with.

Choosing a sweetener made from a food people know and have seen before with is important because I think familiarity makes change easier.

I did not choose monk fruit sweetener because it is superior to other types of sweetener. This is not something that I looked into in my research.

Criticism against non-sugar sweetener

In 2022, World Health Organization published a systematic review on use of non-sugar sweeteners. From that study, they recommended against the use of non-sugar sweetener for weight loss or to reduce risk of noncommunicable diseases (e.g., hypertension and heart disease).

The compounds that they investigated were acesulfame K, aspartame, advantame, cyclamates, neotame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia and stevia derivatives.

Mogrosides, the compound responsible for the sweetness in monk fruit, is not included in WHO’s paper.

Personal take on sugar versus non sugar sweetener

I barely consume any refined sugar in my daily life. With that in mind, I am not adverse to eating regular muffins made from sugar. However, I would not eat a muffin made from refined sugar on a daily basis. Even if it was still within my 50g limit!

At this stage, I am also not against consuming non-sugar sweetener. My default drink for my McDonald’s meal is still Coke Zero. Because I generally don’t consume sweet foods, I don’t think it matters if I was taking regular sugar or aspartame.

There is no evidence against monk fruit sweetener that I am aware of. There was also a study published a few months ago to suggest that mogrosides (i.e., monk fruit sweetener) has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-diabetic, and liver protective properties.

I would take that suggestion with a huge spoonful of salt. But it is still good to be informed.

Dose of mogrosides in my banana muffin

The poison is in the dose right? I used only 30g of monk fruit sweetener in my muffins and that makes me around 10 muffins. Personally, I find it too sweet (because I really don’t take sweets) so there’s room to cut even more for me.

Even at 30g of sweetener, which most clients find to be just right, it is only 3g per muffin. So, I don’t really think it’s an issue.

Would I eat this daily?

Yes.

Me being me, I may even go with 15g of sugar and 15g of monk fruit sweetener to hedge my bet a little.

Where to buy monk fruit sweetener in Singapore

I cannot speak for your local supermarket, but the FairPrice nearest to my place does not stock any form of monk fruit sweetener. Stevia was available but I didn’t go with it. Again, it’s not because I am adverse to it. It’s just cos of familiarity of monk fruit sweetener.

I used the monk fruit sweetener from Green Earth Organic via RedMart. It is a product of China and it contains Erythritol. Erythritol is a naturally occurring sugar alcohol (i.e., non-sugar sweetener) that is made from corn.

I chose this version cos the first ingredient is monk fruit extract. Other brands tend to list erythritol as the first ingredient and can have as little as only 0.8% of monk fruit extract (e.g., Lakanto, Zest Foods, Now Foods, equal).

Cost of using monk fruit extract in your baking

I am not gonna lie. By weight, monk fruit sweetener is a lot more expensive than regular sugar. I paid $11.20 for 200g of sweetener via RedMart. RedMart housebrand sugar was only $1.85 for 1kg. By weight, monk fruit sweetener is 30 times more expensive.

If you consider that my recipe only calls for 30g, it’s still $1.68. Not going to break the bank but it’s not nothing.

Compared to other sweetener, it is relatively affordable. Equal Classic (aspartame) cost about $9.37 for 100g on RedMart.

Navigating the saturated fat dilemma

The issue of concern with butter is saturated fat and its potential to raise LDL-cholesterol aka “bad” cholesterol in our body. There is clear pathophysiology to how this may occur: saturated fat disrupts with the function of LDL receptors, which cause circulating LDL particles in the blood to increase. Saturated fat also directly increases synthesis of LDL cholesterol.

This much is clear.

The contention comes with and controversy comes with if saturated fat actually does increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Both camps have comparatively sound arguments and it’s really hard to make a judgement call on it.

If you ask me, it’s better to err on the side of caution and limit consumption of saturated fat.

How to wisely consume saturated fat

If you have to consume saturated fat, know that not all saturated fats are created equal. Medium-chain and short-chain saturated fats may potentially be not atherogenic aka does not contribute to plaque formation in blood vessels.

If that is so, butter may then be okay to consume in moderation.

Replacing regular milk with low fat milk

I prefer to drink skimmed milk to err on the side of caution. The rationale behind consuming low fat milk, to my understanding, is exactly the same as with butter.

Full fat milk contains about three times more fat than skimmed milk. So if you subscribed to that saturated fat is bad for us or you would like to err on the side of caution, choose skimmed milk.

The amount my recipe asked  for is 100ml to bake about 10 muffins. That is 3.8g of fat if you used regular milk. So, 0.38g of fat from milk per muffin.

Honestly, it’s very negligible.

The banana muffin recipe

Dry ingredients:

Wet ingredients: 

1. Preheat oven to 200°C.
2. Line a muffin pan with muffin liners or cases.
3. Stir all the dry ingredients together and set aside.
4. Stir all the wet ingredients together and set aside. It is okay to use a spoon.
5. Pour dry ingredients into wet ingredients (though the reverse order can also work), mix well.
6. Spoon batter into liners. It is okay to fill them to the top.
7. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 180°C or until toothpick test comes out clean.
8. Cool muffins on cooling rack.

Baking notes

If you are a seasoned baker, you may want to add the walnuts in last. In other words, fold them in only after you have mixed the wet and dry ingredients. In my novice experience, it makes no difference.

I preheat my oven to 200°C but baked them at 180°C. The difference is to account for the temperature drop when I opened the oven door.

I use an Anova Precision™ Oven. It has a steam function and I set it to 100%. I personally prefer to bake with steam after seeing the difference it makes when making sourdough. You can get a similar effect by putting a tray of boiling water at the bottom shelf. The steam helps with the rising and also helps the muffins to cook faster, methinks.

For bananas, I usually mashed them well but forgot to the last time. It turned out really nice to have sticky chunks of bananas in the muffin. I 100% recommend trying.

I didn’t use vanilla cos I kept forgetting!

The ingredients I use is out-of-whack for my liking. Because, they are for my liking. I pretty much put in as much bananas, walnuts, and cinnamon as possible. Because, methinks they are healthy. Feel free to moderate accordingly, you may want to take reference from other recipes to get a sensing of what is normal.

Considerations when using substitutions in baking

Sugar does help to hold the structure of the muffin. When I replaced it with sweetener for the first time, the muffin collapsed as it cooled. It looked small but was very moist and hearty. If you are planning to use sweeteners to replace sugar, this is something you may want to consider.

I tweaked the recipe to include one additional small egg and the muffin did not collapse. However, it does feel a bit more dry. Adding more milk helps with the dryness.

I used a generic extra virgin olive oil. Being an neutral oil, you can’t taste the olive oil. What you do notice is the absence of the butter fragrance. For those who did not like my healthier choice version, I think using butter could have made the difference. I have not tried but intend to.

Oat flour has a bit more texture than wheat flour. Expect marginally more bite. It’s actually not possible to tell unless you know beforehand. It shows up as a moist, hearty texture. In other words, you want to aim for a dense, heavy muffin. A light fluffy muffin is likely impossible because of the oat flour. To get the oat flour, I blend rolled oats in a blender for 2 to 5 seconds. It’s super fuss-free.

Choosing healthier is not absolute health

Lastly, I want to emphasise that eating healthier foods is about the process. It’s not a dichotomous judgement on if a food is healthy or unhealthy. What is healthier for us greatly depends on our health condition as well as nutritional needs.

What is healthier for me is also likely to be different from what is healthier for you.

Everyone can choose healthier foods no matter their current diet. Simply because there is just no perfect diet. Like how health is not an absence of disease, eating healthy is not about an absence of “bad” foods to avoid.