Healthy Homemade Mint Meltaways – GAPS, Paleo, Dairy-Free, Sugar-Free

Kayla Ruetten

When we began a gut healthy way of eating to heal our allergies and autoimmune challenges, we needed a sweet treat that healed and soothed the gut. These healthy homemade mint meltaways were exactly what we needed! Creamy, sweet, and minty, they satisfy a sweet tooth craving with no crash after! We have since added this dessert into our regular rotation, keeping them in the freezer. I like them frozen even better!

This recipe is adapted from Becky Plotner’s book GAPS Recipes, Stage by Stage, With Recipes. If you do not have a copy, I highly recommend it.

Why You Will Love These Healthy Homemade Mint Meltaways

1. Taste. These sweet mint treats remind me of a health-ified version of peppermint patties of childhood. We often ate these at my grandmother’s house and I have developed a taste for mint treats since.
2. Quick & easy to prepare. You can make this recipe in just a few minutes with only 3 ingredients.
3. Healing diet friendly. These mint meltaways are packed with healing fats and minerals and are gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, and egg-free. Whether you are eating GAPS, Paleo, whole food, or just becoming more ingredient aware, this recipe is compatible with many healing diets.
4. Naturally sweetened. Use honey for sweetener; no need for refined and processed sugar.
5. Customizable. You can use any neutral tasting fat: coconut oil, butter, duck fat, lard, etc.

Healthy Homemade Mint Meltaways to Overcome Sugar Cravings

Anytime you are feeling you need something sweet, have a spoonful of the honey/fat mixture. Overtime, sugar cravings will resolve. Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride of the GAPS diet protocol shares:

“Cravings for sweet things and chocolate are due to unstable blood sugar level. In order to remove your sugar cravings you need to keep your blood sugar at a steady level. Here is what we do: make a butter / honey mixture or a coconut oil / honey mixture, put it in a glass jar and carry that jar with you everywhere. Eat 2-3 tablespoons of this mixture every 15-25 minutes all day long. Do this for a month or longer depending on the severity of your sugar cravings; in the meantime focus on implementing the GAPS diet, which will normalise your blood sugar permanently. Once your blood sugar is normal, you cravings will be gone and at that stage you can stop carrying a jar of butter / honey mixture with you (source).”

Often, our bodies actually just need more fat or protein when we crave something sweet! These mint meltaways are a great and yummy way to satisfy a sweet craving without spiking blood sugars.

Metabolic Effects of Honey vs Sugar

A few interesting facts about honey vs. sugar:

1. When we eat refined sugar, our bodies need to burn magnesium in order to process it. Honey contains trace minerals, such as magnesium.
2. Honey has a lower glycemic index than sugar. This means honey does not spike blood sugars as readily as sugar.
3. “Considerable evidence from experimental studies shows that the honey may provide benefits in the management of diabetes mellitus. The benefits could be a better control of the hyperglycemic state, limiting other metabolic disorders and diminishing the deleterious effects on different organs that may produce diabetic complications (source).”
4. Honey is a natural product full of magnesium and other nutrients necessary for the sugars in honey to be safe for the human body.
5. Sugar is highly processed and necessary nutrients for metabolizing are removed in processing. Thus our bodies are depleted of magnesium and other nutrients when we consume processed sugar.

Health Benefits of Animal Fat

These healthy homemade mint meltaways, as well as all other recipes on this blog, can be made with a choice animal fat or coconut oil. We have been repeatedly misinformed that consuming animal fats can cause heart attacks, strokes, high cholesterol, weight gain, and more. The true culprit of ill health comes from too much insulin (which is caused from eating processed sugars and carbohydrates) and vegetable and seed oils.

Glucagon is a hormone produced by the liver in response to consumption of fat and animal protein. This hormone works in opposition to insulin. Insulin is the ‘master fat-storage’ hormone in the body, as long as you have too much insulin in your blood you will store everything you eat as fat. Insulin dominance in the body is the cause of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and many other modern maladies. Why do people have insulin dominance? Because of consuming processed carbohydrates: bread (including sandwiches), breakfast cereals, sugar, soft drinks, snacks and sweets, etc. These carbohydrates stimulate production of too much insulin. In Nature everything works as a union of opposites: to oppose insulin our bodies produce glucagon. Glucagon is a ‘master fat-burning’ hormone, it mobilizes your own body fat to be used for energy production. When your body starts producing glucagon you lose excess weight, your body assumes its natural healthy shape, and the risks of diabetes, heart disease and cancer are removed. To produce glucagon you need to eat plenty of animal fat and protein: meat, fish, eggs and good quality dairy products (source).