This Low Carb Pumpkin Bread with Dark Chocolate Chips is grain-free, sweetener-free and dairy-free and it’s the most perfect way to kick-off my favorite season of them all. Serve this delicious low carb pumpkin bread warm with a little butter, ghee, coconut butter or cream cheese. Depending on your vibes with sweet stuff, you might consider a light drizzle of maple syrup or raw honey.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere autumn is upon us once again and we can get super basic and pumpkin spice ALL the things. I find myself getting super inspired in the kitchen this time of year, this is my favorite season to create. Cozy, comfort foods is my favorite, this is what it’s all about!

Because most of the pumpkin spice foods you find in the world are aggressively over-sweetened with refined sugars or corn syrups or to make “sugar-free” treats, they are blasted with highly-refined, non-caloric sweeteners, which I don’t personally love – it just doesn’t leave a lot of options!

REDEFINING SWEET with Sweetener-Free

As you all know, I am a really big fan of redefining the term sweet. Developing a new relationship with this important taste in our palate is something I find to be very important. Instead of continuously having to push  the boundaries of sweet, going sweeter and sweeter and it never being enough, then taking on a bi-annual sugar detox where you completely cut out sweet entirely because it gets out of hand, all this before the cycle starts over again (because news flash, deprivation doesn’t work) – I prefer to instead break this cycle, redefine the relationship with sweet and really learn to appreciate and crave the natural sweetness of foods. I don’t think sweetness is a taste we need to avoid completely, it’s important to our palate and our food experiences – but I do feel that it is one that can be changed.

I love that by redefining what sweetness is for you, not only do you get the wonderful pleasure of truly appreciating the inherent sweetness and the subtleties of flavors from so many delicious foods, you also redefine the often troublesome relationship many of us can have with sweet things.

Many alternative sweeteners, natural and artificial alike, while they may not contain calories and they may not increase your blood glucose, they also can be anywhere from 100 to 20,000 times sweetener than regular table sugar. This can lead to a hypersensitive palate, where an individual will find that more and more sweet stuff is needed to receive pleasure and to placate the sweet taste receptors. But, it’s also common that other taste receptors are affected as well, the body’s ability to effectively taste (and therefore crave) important flavors like “bitter” (an important taste than can ensure that we are consuming nutrient-dense foods like dark-leafy greens, etc.) can also be affected, which is why you will often hear people who are addicted to sugar and sweet stuff adamantly swear they HATE the way some veggies taste. I believe it, they aren’t being picky, their taste buds are off!

Some research ¹https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/261179.php has also shown that while non-caloric sweeteners may not cause a blood glucose response, some may still trigger an insulin response and what’s worse, it’s an increase of insulin without the high blood glucose. When insulin rises without an increase in the blood glucose that it intends to shuttle out of the blood stream and this can lead to blood glucose levels to follow that fall too low.

Additionally, many of these non-caloric alternative sweeteners don’t raise important satiety hormones that tell the body when it is satiated, satisfied and full. These sweeteners also do not affect neurotransmitters the way that sugar traditionally does, so if the sweet receptors are triggered by the sweet food but it doesn’t receive the expected results of satiety or the feel-good vibes (due to the affects on neurotransmitters) that regular sugar provides it can be quite confusing to the metabolism and this can lead to overeating and increased hunger and cravings.

Finally, many non-caloric sweeteners can lead to GI discomfort like bloating and gas and many have been shown disrupt the gut microbiome, I am sure you know by now the gut plays an incredibly crucial role in our digestion, immune health and overall vitality! We definitely don’t want to be messing with that delicate balance.

In my personal approach, I would rather use a very, very small amount of the natural options on the rare occasion I want something sweet – a date or two, a banana, a light drizzle of unrefined dark maple syrup or raw honey. Not only are they unrefined and unadulterated, blasted with heat or solvents, unlike totally nutrient-depleted sweeteners and even refined table sugar, these foods left in their whole form do contain some actual nutrients. Now, I am not at all suggesting you chug maple syrup to get your B vitamins, but they are in there. Of course, the reason a little goes a long way with these foods is that the less you consume sugar and of course, the sweetener alternatives, first of all, the less you will crave them and the less you will need, but also the more sensitive your taste receptors becomes to sweetness. And suddenly a single date will taste like straight up candy. Coconut milk will take on a sweetness you never noticed before, 85% or 90% dark chocolate will be plenty sweet and warming spices often paired with sweets, like cinnamon or nutmeg or even a little pure vanilla extract, these alone will bring a little sense of sweetness to your palate. It’s incredible.

This Low Carb Pumpkin Bread with Dark Chocolate Chips is sweetener-free. I like it this way! Yes, the dark chocolate chips, depending on which you use may have a little sugar, this is going to be up to you. You can use dark chocolate chips that are stevia-sweetened like Lily’s or maybe go for 100% dark chocolate chips (YES PLEASE). If you are like “UMMM NOPE, Beth, I need some sweetness” you can add a little coconut sugar, maple sugar or date sugar to the recipe, start with 1/4 cup and go from there. Sometimes I will drizzle the littlest amount of maple syrup or raw honey over a warm, toasted slice of this bread, with a little salted grass-fed ghee or butter.

I plan to share a podcast episode or write an article going more into depth on my thoughts on sweeteners and sugar – is that something you might enjoy? If so, please share any questions you may have about alternative / non-caloric sweeteners and my approach to sweetness!

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