Vegan Low Fructose Chocolate Peanut Butter Snickers Bars

I have recently learned that for people suffering from insulin-resistant PCOS or insulin resistance /pre-diabetes in general fructose is a worse sugar than glucose. Personally, I don’t think this is the full story and I think natural occurring fructose (nonprocessed and refined) is generally ok but I did want to take up the challenge and create a low fructose/fructose free dessert that some people with insulin resistance or PCOS would be more comfortable trying. I immediately thought of brown rice syrup because it is glucose-based and has no fructose. I actually love the taste of brown rice syrup but you won’t find it in my recipes very often. The main reason for this is because it is very sticky (even worse than honey) and so I find it a little difficult to work with. I tend to reach out for maple syrup most of the time as it’s a lot smoother and works well in most desserts. Brown rice syrup is excellent if trying to create a sticky caramel type texture so it works really well for these bars. I am going to start using it more often in the future because it has a beautiful flavour.

When I was making this recipe I was convinced that I was making a vegan keto dessert. Turns out that I’m not. Even if the recipe is very high in fat (so much so that I was a little grossed out when I was making it) brown rice syrup is not considered low carb enough. I’m not too familiar with the keto diet but a quick google search has indicated that only non nutritive sweeteners are allowed like stevia, xylitol, and erythritol, etc. personally I don’t use these because all of these are highly refined sugar alcohols and sugar alcohols are very difficult to digest and create gas and bloating in many people including myself. Some people are so sensitive that they can’t even chew chewing gum without digestive upset (xylitol is used to chewing gum as it starves oral bacteria). Even though these sweeteners are zero calories and are shown not to raise insulin levels at all, I’m not convinced they are safe. They are much too similar to artificial sweeteners to me and are so highly refined I simply can not get my head around how they are ok. Stevia is an exception but it’s very difficult to find pure stevia commercially as most of it is combined with other non-nutritive sweeteners like the ones I mentioned above. On a side note, why would we want our sweeteners to have no nutritional value? We need all the nourishment we can get.

As I mentioned this recipe is very high in fat. I was afraid it would be too heavy and would make me nauseous but it was actually delicious! I was very impressed with how it turned out. The only thing I did wrong was that I was too lazy to coat the bars in chocolate properly. I was in a rush and tried to pour the chocolate on top instead. Please do not ever do this! They turned out looking like monsters. I photographed the only two bars that didn’t look like giant poops. I just hate dipping in chocolate though! It’s so messy and time-consuming. I haven’t found chocolate dipping techniques I am happy with but I will persevere.

The recipe is vegan, fructose-free, gluten-free, dairy-free and refined sugar-free. Enjoy!