You’ve seen our
Nutritional Boosters all over our social media pages. You’re totally stoked about these gluten free and vegan meal replacements. You went straight to the nutrition facts panel and were impressed by the powerful punch of protein, the impressive dietary fiber content, the heft of iron in each serving, and yet the shockingly low sugar content. You want to know more. You scan the ingredients list and you’re pleasantly surprised that you can read and say aloud every ingredient (of course you can–would Bob have it any other way?) And then you ask,
“What is monk fruit?” and you pull out your mobile device and take it to The Google.
I know because I’ve seen it happen! I’ve been demoing our Boosters for almost a year now, and this is how it goes most times. So, because I’m not standing behind a sampling booth to answer your question, I will provide the answer so that when you take it to The Google as in the scenario above, you’ll read it straight from the source. First, this is monk fruit:
You can see monk fruit is a small, melon-like fruit with unique properties that make its extract super sweet. You may also know it by its Latin name
Siraitia Grosvenorii, or its Chinese name Lo Han Guo. Monk fruit is so named because it was monks of China who first wrote about the fruit back in the 1200s. Today, you care about monk fruit because its extract is insanely sweet (we’re talking 150-200 times sweeter than sugar), which can be attributed to antioxidants in monk fruit called mogrosides. Yummy!
Despite the sweetness magnitude, monk fruit extract contains
zero calories and has a low glycemic index so does not affect your blood sugar like sugar does. Sweetness without the spike!
Let me reiterate what monk fruit extract is all about:
- Exists in nature–comes from a fruit!
- Sugar free
- Carb free
- Fat free
- Calorie free
- Gluten free
- Grain free
- No alcohol sugars
- No weird aftertaste of artificial sweeteners
So basically it’s a miracle fruit and makes total sense that monks were first on board. We may be about 800 years late to the monk fruit party, but I’d say we’re fashionably late as the Nutritional Boosters are pretty stellar and the perfect application for monk fruit extract. (Note: we only use monk fruit in the flavored Nutritional Boosters; not in the unflavored, unsweetened Protein & Fiber Nutritional Booster.)
Okay, so the Boosters are made of yellow pea protein powder, chia seeds, and, in one case, psyllium fiber. And you (because you have followed Bob’s Red Mill so closely) have watched each of those ingredients debut as their own single-ingredient product. So now you’re wondering when monk fruit extract will arrive as its own single-ingredient product! Well, friends, maybe in another 800 years. Or when we start making teensy-tiny packages. Because it is so sweet, very low quantities of the extract are used to sweeten a 2,000-pound batch of Nutritional Boosters here at the mill. No one wants a pound of monk fruit extract in their home kitchen! And no one wants to pay for it either.
Now you know what monk fruit is and what it looks like. Let us raise a smoothie glass to the monk fruit and enjoy without a guilty conscience. Here’s to monk fruit!
You can see monk fruit is a small, melon-like fruit with unique properties that make its extract super sweet. You may also know it by its Latin name Siraitia Grosvenorii, or its Chinese name Lo Han Guo. Monk fruit is so named because it was monks of China who first wrote about the fruit back in the 1200s. Today, you care about monk fruit because its extract is insanely sweet (we’re talking 150-200 times sweeter than sugar), which can be attributed to antioxidants in monk fruit called mogrosides. Yummy!
Despite the sweetness magnitude, monk fruit extract contains zero calories and has a low glycemic index so does not affect your blood sugar like sugar does. Sweetness without the spike!
Let me reiterate what monk fruit extract is all about:
Okay, so the Boosters are made of yellow pea protein powder, chia seeds, and, in one case, psyllium fiber. And you (because you have followed Bob’s Red Mill so closely) have watched each of those ingredients debut as their own single-ingredient product. So now you’re wondering when monk fruit extract will arrive as its own single-ingredient product! Well, friends, maybe in another 800 years. Or when we start making teensy-tiny packages. Because it is so sweet, very low quantities of the extract are used to sweeten a 2,000-pound batch of Nutritional Boosters here at the mill. No one wants a pound of monk fruit extract in their home kitchen! And no one wants to pay for it either.
Now you know what monk fruit is and what it looks like. Let us raise a smoothie glass to the monk fruit and enjoy without a guilty conscience. Here’s to monk fruit! 
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