5 Healthier Spreads to Slather on Your Toast — With No Added Sugar, Salt or Chemicals

Toasts, waffles, pancakes, and French toast are some of our favorite breakfast foods. And of course, we love to slather all kinds of yummy spreads on top of them: nut butters, jams and syrups to name a few. However, many of the spreads we've been eating since childhood contain sugar, salt, and lots of other dubious additives. So, we have found 5 healthy breakfast spreads that contain no sugar or salt, and are packed with natural plants to give your favorite childhood indulgences a healthy upgrade.

Fruit Spread

Fruit jams/spreads are traditionally thickened with pectin (a compound naturally occurring in fruit). However, most jams contain lots of added sugar. Brands like Smucker's use sugar as well as corn syrup, while some others are slightly better, using less or organic sugar. However, if you can achieve the same, if not better taste, without adding any sugar, why not? Rigoni di Asiago's fruit spreads contain only organic fruits and pectin. 

Almond Butter

Many almond butters contain added sugar, salt, and various flavors like vanilla, blueberry, "cake batter", and more. Almonds actually have a naturally sweet taste, so we are a big fan of brands that make almond butter from 100% almonds, like Woodstock Foods. 

Peanut Butter

Many of us grew up eating Jif peanut butter which contains both sugar and salt, amongst other additives like diglycerides and hydrogenated vegetable oils. Many newer brands now make more natural peanut butter with no added oil by using — you guessed it — ground peanuts. Some of them still contain salt, however. But brands like Crazy Richard's has one single ingredient: peanuts. And we dig it. 

Coconut Butter

Many of us are going (coco)nuts over this delicious spread, but some coconut butters sold in store contain ingredients like sugar (or coconut sugar), salt, vanilla extract, and more. While things like coconut sugar are not necessarily bad for us, why add these when coconuts, like almonds, have a naturally sweet taste? Brands like Essentially Coconut make their coconut butter using only, well, coconuts, as they should.

"Syrup"

Like dousing your French toasts with maple syrup? Try using Rigoni di Asiago's Dolcedi - a low GI sweetener made with only one single ingredient: organic apples. It has a syrupy consistency and comes in a squeeze bottle perfect for drizzling, but it is made entirely from concentrated apple juice and contains no traditional sugar or other additives.

Achieving a healthy and balanced lifestyle takes time, and we can start from swapping out spreads that contain unnecessary ingredients for these healthy and great-tasting ones: one spoonful at a time.