Are raw desserts actually good for you?

The thing with raw desserts … is that we eat them like they're actually good for us. Slap "raw", "organic" or "natural" on something lushly sweet and, gosh, it's a licence to go at it like it's a real meal. Like it's doing us good. Take maple syrup. Because it's "natural", we're happy to slather a pancake in half a cup. Same with agave syrup, because it's "raw". We'd never put that much sugar on anything. And yet they're all the same thing: sugar.

Advocates tell us that the vast quantities of dates in raw desserts render them a health food, which we take to mean that they're good for us. But our bodies don't differentiate between the fructose bomb they get from fruit and the one they get from sucrose – and you'd never eat that much fresh fruit in one go.

In fact, your raw vegan date "cheesecake" could contain up to 10 teaspoons of sugar a slice, the same as a regular Mars bar. There's a particularly popular raw brownie out there in the Instagram sphere with 15 teaspoons of sugar in it. You might know it. Your head might still be spinning from it.

And I don't know about you, but these raw desserts can also leave you with wonderfully crook guts. Nuts are quite harsh on your stomach so the sheer amount of them in these desserts can leave a lot of people very constipated (particularly people who already have gut issues. Which, these days, is most people.)

It's probably also worth flagging – while we're questioning paying 10 bucks for a fancy neenish​ tart – that raw food eating generally has a few big question marks over it. We digest some foods and absorb their nutrients better after they've been cooked. So this new obsession with all things raw could be doing us more harm than good in more ways than one.

Perhaps, try this: make healthy desserts that are nutritious and "natural" without being stuffed with sugar. These brownies are packed with heaps of vegies, are cheap to make, and contain less than half a teaspoon of sugar a serve.

Zucchini and pear brownies

Serves: 9–12

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

¼ cup melted coconut oil

2 eggs

2 teaspoons rice malt syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 small zucchini, finely grated with extra moisture squeezed out

1½ cups almond meal

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ cup raw cacao powder

1 pinch sea salt

1 pear

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C and line a small loaf or cake tin with baking paper.

2. Add coconut oil, eggs, rice malt syrup and vanilla into a mixing bowl and whisk together. Add in the grated zucchini and whisk again to combine.

3. Add in the almond meal, baking powder, raw cacao powder and sea salt and stir until mixed together. Avoiding the seeds, roughly chop half of the pear into 2cm cubes and fold through the brownie mixture.

4. Pour the mix into the tin and smooth with the back of a spoon or spatula. Thinly slice the remaining pear, removing seeds, and place them fanned across the top of the brownie mixture. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.

5. When cooked, remove from the oven, allow to cool slightly in the tin, then cut into 9–12 squares. Serve still warm.

Sarah Wilson is the founder of I Quit Sugar. Recipe courtesy of I Quit Sugar