16 ways to make blueberry muffins healthier

The blueberry muffin: an eternal favorite, bursting with moist flavor, sabotaging diets everywhere. Your love of blueberry muffins doesn't have to translate to bigger hips; you can have your muffin and your slim figure.

The trick is this: adding more nutritious ingredients while cutting out the excess bad fats and calories. In a past post, Jessica has rehabbed blueberry muffins into a pretty decent healthy breakfast treat. Let's take it several steps further.

Add more nutrition
Blueberries are one of the top antioxidants, but you can add more goodies to your muffins to make them even more nutritious:

• sunflower seeds, which also add a nice crunch, about 1/4 cup
  
• lemon peel and/or juice, zest and juice of one lemon
  
• whole oats, about 1/2 cup
• chunks of other fruits, like apple, pear or other berries
• nuts of your choice, 1/2 cup
• ground flax seeds, about 1/4 cup

Lose some fat
Instead of the full amount of butter your indulgent blueberry muffin recipe calls for, try using half the amount of organic butter and substitute one of these nutritious choices for the other half:

• organic applesauce
• spinach puree (1 part spinach, 1 part blueberries)
• plain yogurt
• almond butter
• mashed bananas
  

Substitute for health
Just by making a few easy substitutions, you can make a healthier muffin:

• Use organic, free range eggs for more omega-3 fatty acids and no yucky chemicals.
• Whole grain spelt flour -- or better yet, sprouted spelt flour -- is lower in gluten, higher in protein and more digestible than whole wheat. Use it instead of white flour.
  
• Use buckwheat flour for half of the flour in the your recipe; buckwheat's a Super food.
• Use blueberry, pomegranate or acai berry juice for the liquid in your recipe (usually milk).
• Cut back the amount of sugar, up to half as much, and use sucanat or honey instead of refined white sugar.
  

What tricks do you use to make your blueberry muffins more nutritious?