9 Sugar-Free Sweets and Treats That Are Good for Your Eyes

You don’t have to give up on sweets and treats to eat a healthy diet for your eyes. But you do have to look beyond the processed sweets on the shelves of most supermarkets.

In today’s post, we bring you delicious eye-friendly ideas for sweets and treats you can enjoy with the whole family. And since they’re sugar-free, most of them can be added to a diabetes diet.

What Makes Most Sweets and Treats Unhealthy for Your Eyes?

Sweets and treats are loaded with refined sugar such as white sugar, brown sugar, coconut sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and palm sugar.

Refined sugars have many negative health effects. They have been linked to obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Refined sugars elevate blood sugar levels.

High blood sugar levels have been associated with many eye conditions including:

• Diabetic retinopathy – A complication of diabetes, it occurs when high blood glucose levels damage the delicate blood vessels in the retina and may lead to blindness.
• Cataracts – High blood sugar increases the risk of cataracts by causing the lens of the eye to swell. This makes it harder for the eye to focus incoming light.
• Glaucoma – High sugar levels in the blood can contribute to the narrowing of the blood vessels in the eye. The resulting build-up of fluid increases pressure inside the eye and can lead to optic nerve damage and glaucoma. Diabetes significantly increases the risk of glaucoma.
• Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – A high sugar and carbohydrate diet has been linked to the development of AMD, which affects the central portion of the retina and can cause vision loss.

Sugars like fructose and lactose occur naturally in fruits and dairy. But these foods also have fiber, which slows the rate at which sugar enters the bloodstream. In addition, they also have other nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that processed sweets lack.

Good to know: Skipping sugars altogether may not be a good idea. It may make you eat more fat to compensate. Rather, you want to choose healthy sugars over unhealthy ones.

Discover Sugar-Free Sweets and Treats That Are Good for Your Eyes

Here are some delicious foods that help the eyes without loading your bloodstream with sugar. You can enjoy them instead of less healthy snacks or as dessert after meals. You can easily incorporate them into a diet for good eyesight.

1.   Blueberry & Chia Seed Pudding

Blueberries are some of the healthiest foods for your eyes. They contain anthocyanins and other antioxidants that protect your eye cells from free radicals that can cause age-related macular degeneration and other eye diseases.

A quick way to turn blueberries into a novel dessert is to mix them with chia seeds and almond milk. You can turn the original vegan blueberry and chia seed pudding into a sugar-free recipe by using Monk fruit instead of maple syrup as a sweetener. Or you can skip the sugar altogether.

2.   Fresh Fruits

Berries like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries, and citrus fruits like oranges and grapefruits have antioxidants and vitamin C. These nutrients have a host of health benefits for your eyes.

Berries and citrus fruits contain natural sugars in the form of fructose and sucrose. But they also have fiber, which slows down the absorption of glucose into the bloodstream. They are among the best fruit for the eyes.

A delicious way to eat more fruits is to make a salad bowl. Mix fruits of different colors for a varied and healthy dose of different antioxidants and nutrients. Eating a rainbow of fruits is just great.

Good to know: Many fruits also have glucose. This form of glucose is natural because you consume it directly from whole foods. Glucose can also be added to foods after manufacturing as an added sugar.

3.   Dried Fruits (Soaked)

Fruits good for the eyes include quite a few dried fruits. Look for dried fruits without added sugar. You can further reduce the sugar content of dried fruits by soaking them in water. Soaking also softens them and makes them easier to digest.

With that in mind, some dried fruits have less natural sugar and a considerably lower glycemic index than others. For example, dried apples and prunes have half the glycemic index of dates or figs.

Other low-sugar dried fruits you can eat include dried apricots and dried peaches. Goji berries are another eye health superfood that in the Western world is usually available dry.

Good to know: The glycemic index measures how quickly your blood glucose levels increase after you consume a food. It’s measured on a scale from 0 to 100, with the higher number referring to a greater blood glucose increase.

4.   Banana and Raspberry Sorbet

You can make this fruity dessert with only two ingredients. Mix four cups of frozen raspberries with two ripe bananas in a food processor and transfer to a bowl.

Optionally, you can sprinkle some fresh raspberries over the bowl. That’s it. This super quick and easy recipe is a cool and refreshing treat you can enjoy guilt-free.

5.   Sugar-Free Blueberry Jam

Jam is another way to enjoy blueberries more often. The good news is that a 2009 study found that cooking doesn’t decrease the antioxidants in wild blueberries.

Look for blueberry jam without sugar or that contains a calorie-free sweetener like stevia. You can also make your sugar-free blueberry jam at home from 300 grams or more of frozen or fresh blueberries. Just grab this easy blueberry jam recipe.

6.   Dried Fruit and Nut Beach Balls

Dried fruit and nut balls are easy to prepare and require only a short cooking time. This makes them not only convenient to make but also helps retain their nutrients.

Here’s a delicious dried fruit and nut ball recipe that brings together healthy fruits with heart-healthy oils from nuts. It combines apricots, dates, and prunes with cashews, walnuts, almonds, and a few other ingredients.

The original recipe contains honey, but you can leave that out – the dried fruits are sweet enough.

7.   Sugar-Free Carrot Cake

Carrots have a reputation for being one of the best foods for vision because of their high beta-carotene content. The body converts beta-carotene into vitamin A, which is essential for vision.

Did you know that cooking carrots helps your body absorb more beta-carotene? That makes this sugar-free carrot cake perfect for increasing the bioavailability of beta-carotene.

You do need to put in a bit of effort to bake this cake, but the delicious result makes it all worthwhile.

8.   Sweet Potato Pudding

Have you ever tried using sweet potatoes in a dessert recipe? If not, it’s about time you tried the simple yet filling sweet potato pudding. Sweet potatoes have beta-carotene, which as we’ve seen, is good for the eyes.

The original sweet potato pudding uses dark brown sugar, but you can replace it with a calorie-free sweetener like Monk fruit or stevia. 

Tip: To preserve more of the vitamins and nutrients in sweet potatoes, steam the potatoes instead of boiling them.

9.   Blueberry Monk Fruit Gummies

Who said eye health supplements had to taste boring? Our Blueberry Monk Fruit Gummies are made with freeze-dried blueberries and sweetened with Monk fruit, a zero-calorie sweetener.

In addition to a healthy dose of antioxidants and other nutrients that are good for your eyes, Blueberry Gummies taste deliciously. You can enjoy them at home, at work, on the go, and anywhere in between.

And since they’re vegan, gluten-free, and diabetes-friendly, you can incorporate them into any type of diet.

Keep your eyes healthy with the Blueberry Monk Fruit Gummies.