A very healthy mood-boosting recipe for a day full of sweetness, but totally sugar free.
My blog-partner Jennifer Cauli —a talented food & travel photographer and a friend, also from Italy— and myself joined forces to create a series of recipes (and pictures) that would use the typical Italian ingredients, but also have a contemporary and healthy twist.
Jennifer and I have been talking a lot about mental health during this lockdown, so we came up with a few recipe that can help support your mental wellbeing.
Food and brain function are connected — by feeding your body with the right food you are stimulating your brain to produce and recognise the right chemical signals.
“Food is not only carbohydrates, proteins and fat, but a mixture of thousands of chemicals that interact with our gut microbes to modify our brain signals.” writes Tim Spector.
As a nutritionist, the first thing that came to my mind in relation to mental health is sugar and highly refined products and how the avoidance of these ingredient has shown great results in research (see links below). However, to avoid or to limit eating sugar does not mean you can’t have anymore treats! Especially this year where we will be celebrating our St. Valentines at home, it would be nice if we could avoid binging on sugary chocolates and then feel blue the following day.
‘Jenny & Giulia to the rescue’ then, with a FABULOUS recipe that smell and taste like a rose field, but contains zero added sugar.
To create these treats AKA energy balls, we used native ingredients from the Mediterranean region such as almonds, pistachios, prunes and rose petals —rose oil is known to bring relaxation when used in aromatherapy. We also added a few non-Mediterranean ingredients as they added a better texture to the recipe.
Let’s not forget that cacao and nuts, including cashews and pistachios are a good source of Magnesium and this mineral plays a key role in the health of our brain and nervous system.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/da.10054
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1744388117302694
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-019-01943-4
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/mediterranean-diet-and-depression/67F265CA11470ADC1C9AD2838B7340B7
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/adherence-to-the-mediterranean-diet-is-associated-with-better-mental-and-physical-health/0C91627A98D6ABB078EFBA47B0573EC8
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-019-01943-4
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1734114013710326
RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
- 50g almonds
- 40g cashews
- 5g coconut oil
- 50g prunes (soak in warm water for 10 mins, then drain. You may want to keep
- 1 tsp of that water to moist the mix)
- 8g cacao powder
- 3g dried rose petals
For coating - 10g crushed pistachios
- 5g dried rose petals
INSTRUCTIONS - Soak prunes in warm water for 10 mins, then drain. (You may want to keep 1 tsp of that water to moist the mix.)
- Combine all ingredients in a food processor. Add 1 teaspoon of prune water if it’s too dry. Make small balls the size of a walnut with the mix rolling the tiny balls with your hands.
- In a small ball pour the dried rose petals and crushed pistachios and roll the balls into them to form a coating.
- Leave the balls to cool in the fridge for 1 hour before serving.
Cromo Nutrition 