The beginnings of chocolate began in the ancient cultures of the Mayas and the Aztecs, who spent over five hundred years drinking it without sugar. Not until it was introduced to Europe that chocolate was sweetened for the refined palate that wanted a richer taste.  Fast forward two thousand years, and we’ve gone back to where it all started - sugarfree chocolate!

Although sugar-free chocolate was not very popular initially, more and more people are shifting over to it for numerous health benefits. In fact, the number of sugar free chocolates being consumed by consumers has been growing dramatically as have the number of chocolatiers that are creating new and gourmet sugarfree chocolates. Weight-watching has become an unconscious norm in our society, and with sugar-free chocolate candies, chocoholics can finally get their daily fix of chocolate with less worry about their waistlines. 

Chocolate, and particularly dark chocolate, can actually be very healthy for you.  There are new studies coming out regularly regarding the benefits of chocolate to your health.  However, you have to be careful because the sugar content in it tends to wipe out any health benefits gained! Sugarfree chocolate choices are easier to find online, as compared to supermarkets. While supermarkets have a range of sugar-free and portion-controlled chocolate bars, the selection and quality of available sugarfree chocolates is greater when you are online shopping.

While there are a number of sweetners on the market, the main ingredient that most chocolate companies use in lieu of sugar is maltitol. Maltitol is essentially a type of sugar alcohol, and is a substitute for the actual sugar in sugar-free chocolates. According to research, the sugar replacement contains other compounds such as mannitol, xylitol and sorbitol.

Chocolates containing this sugar alcohol are also frequently referred to as diabetic chocolates. This is due to the fact that this sugar replacement cannot be absorbed into the blood-stream, and hence does not require insulin to break it down. So, for the diabetic chocoholics out there, there’s no call to curb those urges! Eaten in reasonable quantities, diabetic’s can enjoy a delicious gourmet chocolate break as well!

Although most chocolate companies do produce sugar-free products, they require that you read the possible side-effects from these. Eaten in large quantities, these products can have laxative effect.  Since the sugar replacement cannot be absorbed into the blood-stream, it passes through the digestive system quickly! It’s a good way to make sure that you pay attention to portion control when enjoying your sweet treat -

When watching your weight or paying attention to calories and carbs, every calorie counts! With sugarfree chocolates, you’re saving yourself a little bit of extra working out per week and still having a delicious chocolate treat once in awhile.  However, you should keep in mind that although the sugar content is gone, these chocolates still contain cocoa butter, which contains a lot of saturated fat! So keep to the limits!

There are many, many different types of sugar-free chocolate candies. White chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate lollipops, chocolate truffles, chocolate turtles, chocolate kisses, are all types of chocolate candies that can be produced sugar-free! While some companies specialize in sugar free chocolate candies, others produce only traditional chocolates. The trick is to know which sugarfree ones provide the best candies!

There are some sugar free chocolates that taste exactly like the traditional chocolates.   By using high quality ingredients and delicious flavors, these gourmet sugar free chocolates taste delicious and you can not notice that they are missing the sugar!  Due to the quality and cost of the ingredients, these products will be more expensive than supermarket type products.  However, when you want to truly enjoy some delicious sugarfree chocolates, these will truly satisfy!

In the making of sugar-free chocolates at home, always remember that the key ingredient for having sweet tasting candies is sugar alcohol! This can be obtained at most grocery stores or online shopping sites. You can get this as powder or liquid form. However, when making this type of chocolate it is slightly more difficult as compared to traditional chocolates. 

All in all, gourmet sugarfree chocolates are decadent and delicious treats for the palate! Not only do they help keep you healthy, they also can taste just as good as traditional chocolates. Remember, the darker the chocolate, the more flavonoids it contains, and thus, the better for you! So if you want to stay healthy and enjoy your chocolate, why not acquire a taste for dark, sugar free chocolate candies? You’ll definitely be happier and healthier in the long run! Thinner too!



Thanks to Anna O’Malley for contributing this article to our Chocolate blog:

Chocolate Candy Molds

I think it was an early Smothers Brothers routine that told the tale of a man who fell into a vat of chocolate. To summon help, he yelled “Fire!” Why? Because who would come running if he yelled “Chocolate?”

In our apparently endless quest to shed our too, too solid flesh, we seek help from the diet gurus who populate the afternoon talk shows, the monthly magazines, the tabloids, and the endless infomercials. We scan the latest diet program and research reports on a never-ending quest for the secret ingredient that will inexorably melt that fat while giving us guilt-free pleasure. We may yell “Fire!” for help, but what we really want is chocolate.

And now they’ve given it to us. Without cheating on our diets or lying to our inner selves, we can now honestly quote recent scientific reports that declare that certain properties of dark chocolate are good for us. What a triumph! Godiva and Nestle and Hershey and Cadbury are not our enemies after all. Their decadent morsels are the dietary equivalent of a work-out – something we do to make us healthy and slender. As Woody Allen promised in “Sleeper,” science has finally proved that junk food is good for us. It is a dieter’s dream, an incredible fantasy transforming diet horrors into orgies of satisfaction.

Wake up and smell the (black, unsweetened) coffee! Does chocolate have a place in a healthy, well-balanced diet? Possibly. Does it merit inclusion in any serious weight loss program? Absolutely no. The key to any of the hundreds of diets out there is to increase activity and reduce the number of calories. No matter what kind of healthful substances it may contain, chocolate carries far too dense a calorie load to be included in any weight loss plan that can expect to have a modicum of success.

We weight watchers are so gullible, so naive, so desperate for relief from the drudgery and boring routine of a diet, that we clutch at any straw that promises an interruption to our misery. We embrace any concept or substance that will make us human again. We erase our guilt with the sure knowledge that we are only following the dictates of objective science.

A co-worker of mine bakes a variety of goodies and brings them in to sell to staff as a side business. She proudly informs her potential customers that she only uses dark chocolate which has been proven to be healthy. The gang goes wild, weekly buying her entire stock of cake and cookies. Munching down on their thousand calorie snacks, they positively purr with satisfaction that what they are eating is healthy and nutritious.

A voice in the wilderness, I remind them that healthy snacks like vegetables or fruit would confer the same benefits but would also avoid that insidious waistline bulge. Happy tubbies all, they assure me that I am not up-to-date on my knowledge of nutrition and that eating dark chocolate is a proven road to health and I should hop to it.

I look around me at women considerably younger than I am, ranging from pleasantly plump to obese. (Okay, there are one or two skinnies who eat anything they want but they are the rare exceptions in any group, even though the objects of all our envy). It is hard to reconcile the sight of a rotund woman, eyes closed in ecstasy, cheeks bulging, with the concept of optimum weight and health.

What are we doing? We are fooling ourselves yet again. We have convinced ourselves that as long as something we eat has some redeeming nutritional value, it’s okay for us to eat it. We conveniently “forget” about the energy-in/energy-out equation that is the basis for stable and healthy weight. We assiduously avoid our secret internal recognition that what a skinny or normal weight can enjoy occasionally, we on weight loss programs can not. We assure ourselves that indulgences are necessary to keep up our morale and help us stay on our diets.

What diet? Any weight loss plan that promises us that we can eat all we want (and we want a lot) of any particular food, and never feel a pang of hunger, is, quite simply, a scam. Restricting our intake of food necessarily means that we can’t keep eating the way we have in the past – remember, that’s what got us fat in the first place.

Losing weight is tough, boring, frustrating and generally devoid of much pleasure. For the few seconds of elation we feel when we step on the scale and detect a definite loss, we must endure hours and days of refusing what we would like in order to do what we must to reach our goal.

Chocolate, like any food that excites and obsesses us, holds the seeds of our weight control destruction within it. Unlike so many foods we can avoid without a backward glance, it carries a toxic temptation that haunts our dreams, crushes our willpower, and murders our unceasing efforts to control our own appetites. It offers the promise of heaven: pure satisfaction for the pleasure centers of our brain.

It is a powerful weapon that we touch dangerously. It is almost impossible to handle it safely – one bite and the restraints fall off. Our taste buds, our tongues, our neurotransmitters, and our very being, all cry out for more. Like the junkies we are, we beg for one more fix.

It is impossible for an alcoholic to stop after the first drink, unthinkable for a meth head to walk away while crystals are still available, out of the question for a compulsive gambler to leave the table while there are still chips to play. For the true overeater, one taste of the sweet, smooth confection is a diet death sentence.

The only way we tortured weight control freaks can handle it is through total abstinence. One day at a time, we must fight the urge for one taste, one morsel, one shaved corner of a forbidden bar. The longer we can avoid the taste, the more its memory will fade but, like the addict, we will never totally eliminate the cravings and must constantly guard against relapse.

Substituting a low calorie chocolate alternative is tantamount to starting a methadone maintenance program – we no longer get high (gain weight) but we need a constant dosage to maintain a sense of well-being. As long as the taste of chocolate is a fresh and vivid memory, even if a low calorie version is used, the lure of the precious stuff remains and will eventually overwhelm our “no” power and lead to the dread of all we yo-yo overweighters: diet suicide.



Thanks to Virginia Bola for contributing this article to our Chocolate blog:

Chocolate Bar Wrappers

There are now even more reasons for chocolate lovers to rejoice! As more amazing research news comes in about chocolate, the substance is moving from a bad-for-you candy to an important health food. Those of us who had always continued to indulge in occasional chocolate treats can stop feeling guilty and now easily justify our cravings.

You may have already heard that chocolate contains beneficial flavonoids and antioxidents. Flavonoids are naturally-occurring compounds found in plant foods that are full of recognized health benefits. There are more than 4,000 flavonoid compounds, which are a subgroup of a large class called polyphenols. Phenols are believed to help reduce the risk of heart disease by helping prevent atherosclerosis. The flavanols in chocolate appear to help the body use nitric oxide, which is crucial for healthy blood flow and blood pressure, which means that chocolate might help reduce hypertension as well.

Red wine is know for its high phenol content, but an average bar of dark chocolate contains more phenols than 8 ounces of red wine. Scientists at Cornell University and Seoul National University examined the cancer-fighting antioxidant content of hot cocoa, red wine, and tea, and found that cocoa had nearly double the antioxidants of red wine and four to five times more than tea.

Holland’s National Institute of Public Health and Environment found that dark chocolate contains 53.5 mg of catechins per 100 grams. (Catechins are the powerful antioxidants that fight against cancer and help prevent heart disease). By contrast, a cup of black tea contains only about 14 mg of catechins and green tea has about 30 mg of catechins.

A study at University of California Davis found that participants who ate chocolate showed a reduction in platelet activity. This means that chocolate has an anti-clotting, blood-thinning effect that can be compared to aspirin.

A Harvard University study of 8,000, with an average age of 65, revealed that those who consumed chocolate lived almost a year longer than those who did not. Those who ate one to three candy bars per month had a 36 percent lower risk of death (compared to the people who ate no candy), while those who ate three or more candy bars per week had a 16 percent lower risk.

A study of older men in The Netherlands, known for its chocolate, showed that those who ate the most chocolate, an equivalent of one-third of a chocolate bar every day, had lower blood pressure and a 50 percent lower risk of death. The researchers also noted the men eating the most cocoa products were not heavier or bigger eaters than the men who ate less cocoa.

And it’s not just dark chocolate that is the only healthy type of chocolate. Most studies talk about the benefits of dark chocolate, but some of the most recent news about chocolate includes good news for milk chocolate lovers, who have been left out in the past.

The Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia did a study that shows that milk chocolate seems to boost brainpower. The groups in the test consumed, on different occasions, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, carob and nothing. Then they were tested for cognitive performance including memory, attention span, reaction time, and problem solving.

According to Dr. Bryan Raudenbush, “Composite scores for verbal and visual memory were significantly higher for milk chocolate than the other conditions.” The study also found that consumption of milk and dark chocolate was associated with improved impulse control and reaction time. It seems that by consuming chocolate you get stimulating effects from substances found in chocolate, such as theobromine and phenylethylamine, which then lead to increased mental performance.

Chocolate really does make you feel good, too. It is known to stimulate the secretion of endorphins, producing a pleasurable sensation similar to the “runner’s high” a jogger feels after running several miles. Chocolate also contains a neurotransmitter, serotonin that acts as an anti-depressant. Studies in England show that even the aroma of chocolate gives a bout of euphoria and will help lift the spirits.

And now people are looking at chocolate for skin care. According to Marlies Spinale, director of Tru Spa, “Like many other antioxidants, cocoa polyphenols are thought to offer the skin protection from free-radical damage caused by sun, pollution, stress, alcohol consumption and other factors. I believe that we will hear more about the benefits of chocolate in skin care.”

Some people have been avoiding chocolate because one of the main ingredients of chocolate is cocoa butter. It was thought that it was an unhealthy fat, but actually cocoa butter is not unhealthy. It is made up of the beneficial fatty acids– oleic acid (a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat also found in olive oil), stearic and palmitic acids. Stearic and palmitic acids are healthy forms of saturated fat. Plus chocolate contains vitamins A, B1, C, D, and E, as well as potassium, sodium, and iron.

So go ahead and indulge in a little chocolate, in moderation of course. I would recommend that you try to find organic chocolate, and stick with darker chocolate because it has more chocolate flavonoids and less sugar. (Sugar weakens the immune system; so don’t consume sugar if you are ill.) And a little bit of milk chocolate is alright when you need an occasional milk chocolate brainpower boost, such as before a test. All you students take note!

Chocolate as a health food– can life get any better?

By Dianne Ronnow, © 2006 Mohave Publishing.

If you need a little extra help losing weight, I have good news for you. I found an excellent safe diet aid that really helped me lose weight, burn fat, and get my metabolism going!



Thanks to Dianne Ronnow for contributing this article to our Chocolate blog:

Godiva Liqueur