My family and I don’t tend to eat much chocolate for the simple reason that caffeine is so incredibly addictive and who needs more strain on already stressed out adrenals in this crazy day and age?
When we go out to a movie as a family, however, I usually make an exception and pick up a bit of quality chocolate for us to nibble and enjoy during the show.
Have any of you noticed that good quality chocolate is getting increasingly hard to find these days?
My husband and I first started to notice that American chocolate was going to the dogs about 20 years ago. Upscale American chocolates like Russell Stover, Godiva and others started to add artificial ingredients and cheapened the quality of the chocolate with milk powder, vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter and even artificial flavors!
To avoid these cheap imitation chocolates, we started to buy chocolate only at a small British shop where we could procure European chocolates like Cadbury’s (only made in the UK – the USA Cadbury’s was bad quality), Lindt and others.
Now it seems the European chocolates have followed suit and gone downhill in quality as well. At our recent family movie outing just last week, my husband could not find a single brand of European chocolate at our local Fresh Market that was free of additives, artificial flavors or rancid vegetable oils.
It seems our only choice for decent chocolate now is at the health food store. Organic brands have so far held the line on cheapening their product. Starbucks used to have quality chocolate as well but I haven’t checked the ingredients list there in a while as I don’t drink coffee and so don’t shop there very often if ever.
I’ve found that even if a brand is ok one day, it might not be the next so frequent checking and rechecking of ingredient labels is necessary to ensure that quality is still intact.
What chocolate brands are you using these days? If you have discovered a brand that is free of garbage ingredients and doesn’t include soya lecithin, please post about it in the comments section.
Since I only eat chocolate now and then, I insist that my chocolate experience be a quality one!
Ombar are a British company, but their organic chocolate has just 3 ingredients. It’s all raw and organic, I can’t speak for all of the various flavours but generally their chocolate is of a high, clean standard.
Try Creo Chocolate in Portland, Oregon. Excellent cocoa and they use cocoa butter in their chocolate!
Creochocolate.com
Thanks!