Candies, chocolates, peanut butter cookies, and ice creams taste great and are a perfect sweet fix. What’s not great about them is the high-sugar content and the immensely over-processed ingredients. Excessive sugar intake can lead to acne, fatigue, and other issues, but what should one do to satisfy their sugar craving that seems to hit out of the blue? Look for brands that sell healthy candy alternatives!
When the sugar urge strikes, reaching for the closest candy bar, digging out ice cream from your freezer, and ripping open a packet of chocolates is easy. You have to train your mind and build immense willpower to put your health first and replace healthy candy alternatives in place of sugary snacks.
Why Are Healthy Alternatives Necessary?
Sugar is believed to be the culprit behind chronic diabetes and obesity. Studies have even linked sugar with poor heart health, insulin imbalance, and increased risk of certain cancers. Sugar intake can become a vicious cycle – regular sugar intake triggers dopamine (the happy hormone) in your brain, creating a craving for more sugar by linking it with the consumption of sweets.
If you’re not yet ready for a clean break but want to opt for healthy choices and reduce sugar intake, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve compiled a list of brands that sell healthy candy alternatives. What was that saying? Have your cake and eat it too? Now you can do it without feeling guilty about your food choices.
Top Brands That Sell Healthy Candy Alternatives
SmartSweets
With SmartSweets in the market, healthy candy is no longer an oxymoron. Their philosophy is simple: Kick Sugar, Keep Candy. Tara Bosch, the creator of SmartSweets, first attempted to remove sugars altogether from her food items and later landed on a formula that removes up to 92% of sugars compared to regular candies. With plant-based, sweet, and sour options, you and your kids can satisfy your sweet tooth without sugar alcohols or artificial sweeteners. Their online site lets you customize your candy box. Choose any flavor from the Sour Blast Buddies, Red Twists, or Sourmelon Bites, and enjoy less than 3 grams of sugar per bag.
Behave Candy
We have to thank Mayssa Chehata’s dad for being her inspiration behind the dream of launching Behave candy. As a kid, she wasn’t allowed sweets, making her rebel and eat them in excess. Years later, she realized the harmful effect these treats had on her health and decided to merge her love for all things sweet with a low-sugar lifestyle, which is how Behave Candy was born.
Low-sugar gummies by Behave incorporate flavor from fruits such as raspberry, lychee, and passionfruit and let you enjoy the gummy goodness minus the sugar guilt. The chefs at Behave Candy have devised ways to remove the artificial ingredients for their take on this popular candy. Enjoying a bunch of gummies would not wreak havoc on your diet.
The Seriously Good Gummy Bears stay true to their name and are seriously good. You cannot tell they’re an alternative and will have no trouble gobbling up the entire pack in one go. For sour favorites, Sour Stars or Sour Bears pack a perfect tart punch, while the sweet gummies have seriously delicious flavors.
Ellenos
Con and Alex are an Australian father-son team who love making Greek yogurt more than anything. Their heavenly dessert was discovered by an air hostess Yvonne, who hitched a plan with her husband Bob, and after years of coordination and miles of travel, Ellenos was born, and we got a chance to savor it.
A serving of Ellenos Greek Yogurt and your dessert cravings will be satisfied for the day. Available at yogurt bars in supermarkets and Whole Food, this might be your next favorite thing to eat after raw cookie dough. Enjoy a cupful of Greek yogurt on your next outing, and be sure to let us know how that experience was for you. In addition to delicious yogurt, Ellenos adds chunks of real fruit, including mango, marionberry, lime, lemon, passion fruit, and pumpkin, enhancing the flavors and making each cup a healthy candy alternative. A sweet and crunchy granola/cookie topped Greek yogurt cup from Ellenos is all you need to snack on.
Sambazon
Açaí pronounced ah-sigh-ee is an Amazonian superfood. Rich in antioxidants and full of omegas 3, 6, and 9, it is a nutritious snack with low sugar content. It tastes like a mix of dark chocolate and sweet fruits. No wonder Sambazon grew 20% in popularity in just one year through their frozen açaí puree packs. These packs can be used to make a quick and healthy breakfast or snack. Blend the contents, pour into a bowl, and top with fresh fruits, honey, or nut butter and enjoy the oxidant-rich goodness.
Other than these puree packs, you can enjoy Sambazon’s açaí bites and smoothie pops, among other açaí-focused desserts and snacks.
Yasso
Our next healthy candy alternative brand is Yasso. We love them because they understand nothing beats getting ice cream from an ice cream truck on hot summer days. Yasso’s Frozen Greek Yogurt Bars have a way of making you feel good after enjoying one. These bars have no artificial sweeteners, a low-caloric content, and lots of flavors to choose from. Each serving size offers 5 grams of protein.
The keto, organic, or other healthy variants of ice creams fail to achieve the smooth ice-cream-like texture, and each bite acts as a reminder, saying ‘it doesn’t taste like ice cream’. That’s not the case with Yasso. The silky-smooth goodness of Yasso’s frozen line-up will convert you to join the Frozen Greek Yogurt fan club! The Yasso ice cream bars, dipped cones, ice cream sandwiches, and poppables outdo the taste of your regular frozen fare with their creamy deliciousness.
The coffee poppables are a kid (and adults) favorite. Take Greek yogurt and chocolate-covered espresso beans, imagine the best of both worlds, and you’ll get Yasso’s Coffee Poppables. With less than 60 calories per poppable, having one, two, or even three is allowed!
MusclePharm Protein Candies
MusclePharm is a performance lifestyle company that takes pride in incorporating science into its products. Their comprehensive product portfolio has a client base in more than 100 global locations. Their focus is on functional energy beverages and nutrition products.
MusclePharm’s Protein Candies are gluten-free, non-GMO, and have 10g of protein per serving. Think M&Ms but healthy. They come in three unique flavors: crunchy, peanut chocolate, and milk chocolate. Tasting like real M&Ms, they are a perfect healthy candy alternative giving all the flavors minus the guilt.
Simple Mills
A dish is as healthy as its least nutritious ingredient. What we love most about Simple Mills is that they keep their ingredients simple yet healthy. Their website says: “We believe that if you don’t recognize an ingredient, chances are your body won’t either.” This statement alone has earned this brand in our healthy candy alternatives line-up.
The flour used by Simple Mills is a blend of fruit seeds and nuts such as cashew, flax, sunflower and watermelon, and coconut oil. Their snack menu includes frostings, baking mixes, and premade desserts. Cookies and Sweet Thins is a crisp treat you can enjoy anytime during the day or night. The Soft Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies contain way less sugar than home or bakery-made cookies.
Clio Snacks
Continuing our love for the tasty goodness of Greek yogurt, we next introduce you to Clio Snacks. Biteable Greek yogurt bars allow you to choose between low-sugar and parfait. The Ukrainian immigrant to the States, Sergey Konchakovskiy, is the founder of Clio Snacks.
Clio Snacks have a flavored yogurt center wrapped inside a bar of chocolate. Sure, they are a healthier candy alternative, but their goodness doesn’t end here. They are convenient to eat anywhere and everywhere. At home, at work, on the way home or work, late at night, whenever a sugar rush strikes!
We’re biased for the Chocolate Greek Yogurt Bar, but the rest of the flavors taste pretty amazing too.
LesserEvil
LesserEvil is set to provide healthy, clean, and better-for-you snacks in a world full of hyper-processed foods. Satiating your desire for sweet treats, LesserEvil’s cookies come in three flavors: Birthday Cake, Fudge Brownie, and Almond Butter Chocolate Chip. Each flavor has only 5 grams of sugar and fat. The grain-free ingredients ensure that these cookies are keto and paleo-friendly.
Bare Snacks
Ditching sugar, gluten, and fats. Bare Snacks offers chip snacks made with ripe fruits. The sweet and flavorful treats might not look or taste like a chocolate chip cookie, but their fruity flavor is hard to resist.
The available choices range from Cinnamon Banana Chips to chocolate coconut and Fuji & Reds Apple Chips. Eating a dried fruit out of a bag feels almost the same as enjoying a fruit straight out of the refrigerator.
Takeaway
It’s a great time to be alive when you can snack on candies, gummy bears, chocolate ice creams, and yogurts and keep your sugar content in check. Suitable for traveling and enjoying throughout the day or night, these healthy candy alternative brands indulge even the pickiest of eaters.
Even though the list is full of healthier alternatives, it is up to you to manage the portions. If you are gobbling 3-4 packs of Seriously Good Gummy Bears, then eating that pint of ice cream in your freezer might have been cheaper!
