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!
Trader Joe’s Fair Trade Swiss Dark Chocolate is only 71% but very good. Cocoa mass, cane sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla bean pods is all that’s listed on product. Made in Switzerland.
Theo’s, hands down, even though they make some of their chocolates with powdered milk. My daughter, who took the tour, told me why but I can’t exactly recall. Something about liquids changing the quality of the chocolate. I just don’t choose anything with that ingredient.
Theo, organic fair trade and for me, it’s local. And no soy lethecin in their milk chocolate! http://www.theochocolate.com/
green&blacks.
You might want to check out Askinosie Chocolate at: http://www.askinosie.com/p-75-77-davao-dark-chocolate-bar.aspx
The ingredients for their dark chocolate bar are: cocoa beans, organic cane juice, and cocoa butter. The blogger of Nourishing Days wrote a review on them at: http://www.nourishingdays.com/2008/12/askinosie-chocolate/
I would love, however, to find a chocolate that is just made with honey. Have you ever heard of a chocolate bar made with honey??? If so, do share!
Amanda, it’s not a bar, but it’s still dang good! I make Rite Chocolate, a spoonable chocolate with raw, organic, and local (to Maine) ingredients. It’s sweetened with honey only. Check it out here: http://www.ritechocolate.com!
Thanks! I’ll be checking out your site!
I make my own with milk powder, vanilla, stevia extract, chocolate powder, some quality sea salt and butter. Mix, put in fridge overnight. Delicious. I can’t remember the volumes as I haven’t made it in a long long time. When I’m lazy, I just buy an organic mint dark chocolate bar.
cadbury UK has MSG in it
Cadbury UK used to be good but is garbage now.
I use Green & Black Organic 85% but it still has milk powder. Is it possible to make chocolate without powdered milk?
We use that too, mostly for baking. It may have milk powder in it, but it is still some of the most delicious chocolate ever, and we’re real chocolate snobs at our house!
Sorry not to be of any help for USA, but good chocolate in Europe can be found. Even at supermarkets. I can see France and Switzerland. In France chocolate is more expensive than in Switzerland and I tend to have to watch the list of ingredient to make sure the first ingredient is chocolate and not Sugar! Another good choice is to buy 70% minimum, which means dark chocolate. I hardly buy milk chocolate as there tends to be more unwanted ingredients there.
So start buying dark chocolate and make your own truffles all year around, like for Christmas. It is easy and you control which cream you put in there. You can put some tea or orange or nuts in there, “un regal”.
They also have a couple great dark chocolate bars.