Low-Sugar Banana Muffins for Gut Health

Author's Bio: Jessie Gutsue, MA, RDN, IFNCP

Hey y'all.

I'm Jessie Gutsue. I'm a Registered Dietitian and Functional Medicine Dietitian with Oswald Digestive Clinic.

Today we're going to get into Low-Sugar Banana Muffins for Gut Health.

If you're interested in more gut healthy cooking tips, then check out the link here for Five Tips for Quicker Gut Healthy cooking.

Now, without further ado, let's get into these Low-Sugar Banana Muffins. In fact, there is no added sugar, just a couple of fruits. So they're all natural sources.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

Why Banana Muffins?

Okay, so the primary ingredient of course is banana. And I am such a fan of banana muffins, banana bread. It doesn't matter what it is for a couple of reasons. Number one, I can't see food go to waste. So when my bananas start turning, I start thinking about what I can make with them, and I get really excited because it's sort of like a dessert with a little boost of nutrition. And these ones come with some particularly unique nutritional profiles because bonus, I'm adding cranberries to these ones. So we'll get into that one in just a minute. But before we get started, if you have bananas that are still green, well then there are a few things you can do.

Low-Sugar Banana Muffins for Gut Health

Number one, let's talk about the nutritional profile that changes as bananas age. So when they are green, right from the store, green tips and all, they'll have the highest amount of starch. And this starch is a type of resistant starch. So as the name implies, it is resistant to our small intestine to break down and absorb those sugars or starches. Instead, they pass through to the colon aka the large intestine where our microbiome should reside and be really excited about this nutrition that's coming for it. So these resistant starches are fermented by the bacteria in our colon, and a lot of good comes from them.

In fact, there is some research that shows that the short chain fatty acids that are produced by these fermented resistant starches like butyrate and purate and acetate, could be one of the ways that we increase our GLP one. So isn't that fun? Because I know you all have heard about GLP one, but more importantly, these feed our good probiotics, our good bacteria so they can grow and thrive and give us lots of different benefits like regularity in the bathroom, insulin regulation or insulin sensitivity, better sleep, better mood, and that gut brain access. So there are a lot of different things that benefit when our microbiome is happy and what a great way to add in some nutrition and make it sort of kid friendly. So if you had kids in the home, I highly encourage you to make muffins or even banana bread, but I do find kids love some muffins. They just tend to like that individual packaged thing.

So all right, let's get into more about the bananas. Now, if you have the green banana, like I mentioned, the resistant starch will be much higher, therefore the sugar will be lower. And if you want to use that green banana, you can, but just know that the texture will be a little bit different and certainly the sweetness will be lower. But if you want to use bananas that are a spotty, you'll have a sweeter profile. Bananas can take on the same, a little bit similar effect that sugar does as well as eggs. So it's sort of a two prone. You can do a little replacement of fat, a little replacement of sugar, and it can do a little action of the eggs. So it's a really multipurpose ingredient. But if you want to hustle your ripening of your banana, you can do a few things.

Tips to Ripen Bananas Faster

Number one, one of the ways I often make banana muffins or whatever it is that is banana flavored, is I heat the banana over the stove with some fat. And this is a great way to really get those aromatic compounds flowing. It just really makes it caramelize and the color and the flavor and all of that really come to life. So you can do that by heating it over the stove. It does turn some of those starches to sugar. So that's one quick way to hustle along the transition from a green to a brown banana. In addition to that, you can also put them in a brown bag, either with a banana that's already sort of ripened or something like avocado or tomato. These fruits will also let off ethylene gas. And ethylene gas is what helps turn that banana. So bananas themselves release ethylene gas, so you can put the brown banana in along with some green bananas into a brown bag, and you can transition it over a few days to a brown banana or some of those other fruits that led off this ethylene gas.

Alright, so there you have it. If you want to use a green banana or a brown spot of banana or a banana that's really past its prime, you can do any of the three or anything in between, but you will get some variation in the texture. So just know that going into it.

Wet Ingredients Breakdown

Alright, so I have here one cup of mashed banana and I am using a banana that has been turned. It is brown, and you can see that based on the texture. Now, if mine were still green and starchy, and in fact these starches, they're long tree-like starches, and so they take a little bit longer to digest, which is how you absorb less sugar with these long starches. But it's also what keeps the banana intact physically as well. So mine's turned. It's mostly sugar at this point.

Alright, and now I'm going to add to that a couple of eggs, a quarter cup of olive oil, and I love olive oil. This is one way to add a lot of flavor, obviously no sugar and a lot of good polyphenols. We're going to add in a quarter cup of olive oil, now a half a cup of milk and I'm using whole milk. The recipe calls for whole milk. Of course, if you use a different milk, you can get a little bit different texture because with that whole milk, I am adding fat of course, as well as protein. And so if you're using something like a plant-based milk, you won't get that fat nor the protein. And I'll crack a couple of eggs, and these are eggs at room temperature, and that way you just warm up the mixture a little bit quicker. If you have a cold egg, you're obviously coming from a lower temperature at the beginning of the recipe. And then I have here one teaspoon of vanilla extract, and I tell you what, vanilla extract is just such an easy way to add flavor without any other sugar. So it's a great way to boost up our recipes so that they're lower sugar and make that gut happy. And we'll just mix these in.

Finally, we add a little bit of apple cider vinegar and apple cider vinegar. We'll do a couple things. Number one, the vinegar itself. That acid with the combination of baking soda will help bluff up the muffins. So that's the chemical reaction, but also the acetic acid in apple cider vinegar, although there is a prebiotic in it with the mother in the apple cider vinegar that I use, you will cook it and it's pretty negligible, but it's a little bit of acid. So it helps to lower that pH overall, which is something that our bacteria really like.

Alright, we'll set this aside. Bring on our dries. So this is like any muffin recipe that you've done. You add your wets, you put your dries together, and you mix 'em together. So now we'll get into our dries. Now I love the dry recipe because it's a combination of a lot of different flowers and we know with all the research that's done, diversity in our food and our plants help to diversify the bacteria that are in our colon. And that's really, really important. We really want a well-rounded amount of bacteria, the different types of bacteria. There's a lot of different jobs that they all do. So we'll start with one cup of oat flour. Now, I almost always will grind my oats in my blender. It works perfectly. You can also buy oat flour, but I find it to be expensive and unnecessary.

Dry Ingredients Breakdown

So one cup of oat flour here, oat flour is one of those great ingredients because number one, it's a pretty cheap gluten-free flour, but it also comes with beta glucan. And beta glucan is a type of soluble fiber that helps to slow and create this gel in our digestive tract that really soothes and pulls in cholesterol to lower our cholesterol. And it just helps to feed our bacteria because ultimately that soluble fiber does act like a prebiotic. So again, another way to make our gut happy. So here's our oat flour. Next we'll be adding a little bit of all-purpose flour. Now we have a three quarter cup of both almond flour and all-purpose flour. And I like this. I find all-purpose flour makes the recipe more approachable for kids, keeps the texture more like what most people come to expect.

All right, so that is our oat flour and our all-purpose flour. And now we will add in our almond flour. Almond flour is a great way to add in a little bit of healthy fat, a little bit of protein, so it helps to balance our blood sugar. Again, another thing that makes our body really happy and that fat just helps to keep the moisture and the texture of the muffin really nice without again adding any sugar. Okay, so there's our three flour. We're also going to add in a little bit of flaxseed. Now flaxseed has some great fibers and good healthy fats and it gives just a little bit of texture too. So let's mix those together. Now we'll add our baking powder and baking soda. So we have one teaspoon of baking powder and a half a teaspoon baking soda, and those are both of our lemons to just lift our muffins. And then a scosche of nutmeg.

And again, spices are a great way to not only add good antioxidants, polyphenols, this really intense amount of nutrition, but it also is a great way to add flavor and so you don't need sugar. Alright, and then we'll add in some cinnamon as well.

These are like go-to warm spices when you're going for a muffin, any of these cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, all those will go really well as a warm, great way to omit sugar. And then finally, a quarter teaspoon of salt. So we have in here our flour, our flowers, our leave, our spices, and our salt. And I always like to whisk these in. Just make sure that some of those leavers and the salt, you don't get pockets of those and as you see no sugar.

Combining Wet and Dry Ingredients

Alright, so now we will combine our wet with our dry. So this is a standard dump recipe. Just a quick one and then we'll sort of gently fold these in. There is gluten in this recipe because I did use all purpose flour. So it's one of those reasons why we don't want to overmix, but you do want to saturate all the flour.

Optional Fruit Add-Ins: Cranberries

Now that I have that mostly together, the next step I'm going to do is to add in my fruit. Now you can use blueberries, raspberries, I am going to use cranberries. I love the addition of cranberries here. Number one, eating a cranberry as is pretty tart. I mean, it sort of makes you want to click your teeth, but I find when it's incorporated into a muffin, the flavor is really good, especially when it's surrounded by something that's a little bit sweeter and there's fat and there's other things that help to balance out that tartness. Whereas blueberries, raspberries, we will eat them.

So this is a great way to get in a nutrient, unique nutrient to a cranberry that you wouldn't probably typically include into your daily regimen. So I have a cup of frozen cranberries. Now I will say I typically use frozen berries when it comes to recipes like this. Although you will get some color bleeding, they're just easier. They're typically cheaper and they're easier to find organic in this case. So I have about a cup here. I sort of sliced them up. Some are whole, some are pieces, and we're just going to fold these in and using this bright red fruit, this is a great way to add in some anthocyanins from that red fruit that you may not normally get. So we know that red is one of those colors of plants that a lot of people will miss out on. We typically do blues and greens and oranges, and I feel like that comes easier into most people's diets, whereas red may not. So we'll fold these in again sort of slowly, but as you'll see, you'll get some bleeding from that red. You may or may not like it. I don't know. I think it's sort of pretty.

Baking the Muffins

And then we're going to let this rest here, let the whole thing saturate really nicely. I'm going to turn on my oven and prep my pan and we'll be right back. Okay? Okay. Hey, we're back in. Our muffins have baked. So I remember I set my oven for 350 degrees Fahrenheit and these baked about 20 minutes. Now, I did go in and stu each muffin with a couple of cranberries just for color, and I scooped each of these quite full, almost to the top, and it made 12 fold muffins. They are gorgeous and the texture is beautiful.

Now remember, because I used cranberries, you get those anthocyanins and studies show that with more red fruits and red veggies, those anthocyanins will help to increase our type of bacteria called firmicutes, and it will also help to increase our short chain fatty acids, both of which do great work in our microbiome. Look at this. When you look into this muffin, the crumb is really nice and I honestly do not miss the sugar.

So I hope you'll try this recipe. If you're interested in more recipes and cooking demos like this one, then

Email us at cookingdemos@oswalddigestiveclinic.com.

I hope to see you again next time. As always, make all the recipes, enjoy your time in the kitchen, and we'll see you next time.

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