Healthier Lebanese Sweets Are An Option
Lebanese sweets do not have to be unhealthy. With few modifications, many of them can be very healthy and nutritious. Their calorie content can be reduced as well. All this is possible for many types but not all of them. A few are naturally high in sugar and reducing its content would greatly affect their taste.
Desserts and confections are consumed every day and especially during joyful occasions. Most people however have a predetermination that these are unhealthy items high in calorie content and that their consumption should be minimized as much as possible. This is in large part due to the fact that they contain a lot of sugar. Lebanese sweets do contain a lot of it, but its amount can be modified in order to make them healthier. This would obviously affect the taste and reduce their sweetness, but if done right, its impact on taste can be minimized while its impact on its healthy characteristics can be maximized. Moreover, sweeteners can be sued instead of sugar in order to reduce the amount of calories in them.
In Lebanese sweets, most of the sugar comes in the form of syrup. These pastries don’t contain much raw sugar. Some is added to the filling, but most of it comes from the syrup that is separately prepared then added to them before or after baking, depending on the type of pastry is in consideration.
Borma for example is known to have a lot of syrup in it. This sweet in particular can be made much healthier by letting more syrup drain from it after baking it. In fact, after it is baked, Borma is left for hours to drain the large amounts of syrup that are added to it. The more time the draining process is given, the less sugar it will contain at the end and the healthier it will be and the less calories it will contain.
Looking at any recipe of these desserts and calculating the amount of calories in them, you will find that on average, they contain about fifty calories apiece. This obviously depends on the type of the piece and its size, but this is a round number that can be used as an approximation. Many people don’t have a problem with this amount of calories and like to limit their consumption to one or two pieces. Those who can take more calories can let themselves pick even more pieces. But for those who like fewer calories per piece can either reduce the amount of sugar or use a sweetener instead. The sweeteners can play a great role here as they can considerably reduce the amount of calories in them.
This would be an option first if you consider sweeteners to be healthy in the first place. Some people believe that sweeteners have adverse effects and prefer regular sugar instead. If that is not the case for you however, it is important to note that Lebanese sweets made with sweeteners don’t stay fresh for as long as regular ones. Sweeteners don’t help preserving the pastries as much as regular sugar does and thus this can affect the freshness if the pastries are kept for over a two week time frame.
Other than that, increasing the amount of nuts positively affects the health value of these confections. Nuts are considered nutritious food elements as well as they are necessary in many diets. It thus pays well to make sure your pastries are dense in nuts rather than being dense in syrup. The latter gives calories without any nutritional value while the former delivers both at the same time and is considered of superior value.
