Plamil No Added Sugar Chocolate Is Almost Chocolate Heaven

You lucky, lucky Londoners. I’m in London this week and just happened to stumble past the Wholefoods Market while touring through Kensington.

I absolutely had to go in and take a look, partly because I wanted to stock up on a few organic basics so I had some snack foods to carry around with me, but also to check out the skin care and chocolate aisles - my two favorite sections in any health food store of course.

Well, what can I say. Wholefoods Market in London is by far the most amazing Wholefoods I’ve been in yet. You Londoners are very lucky!

The highlight of course was the chocolate. Never before have I found such a range of healthy and sugar-free chocolates. Usually I’m struggling to find just one, but standing out proudly in the healthy confectionery section were three brands of healthy raw and sugar-free chocolates, each with their own vast range of flavors.

Even better still, I found another brand of sugar-free (but not raw) chocolate in the not-so-healthy confectionery section. This one went straight into my shopping basket because it’s sweetened with xylitol, one of my favorite sugar alternatives!

Plamil no added sugar chocolate with shelled hemp seeds

I found this Plamil branded chocolate in the confectionary aisle at Wholefoods, next to Green & Black and the zillion other organic and fair trade brands of chocolate you can usually find in health food stores.

What caught my eye was the huge “no added sugar” text on the front of the packet. Usually when I look at the ingredients list on a product that claims to be sugar free, I find the sugar alcohol maltitol listed. But this Plamil product is different, it’s sweetened with xylitol.

If you haven’t heard me talk about xylitol before, it’s one of my favorite sweeteners. I love it because it has an extremely low Glycemic Index so safe for the skin, and every resource I’ve read about it seems to be all for it.

If you want to read more about xylitol, there’s a great article from Nexus magazine which is reprinted here - http://www.laleva.cc/food/xylitol.html

Plamil chocolate is not raw so I don’t really class it as a “healthy” chocolate. To be considered healthy, the cocoa, or cacao in a chocolate must not be heated in any way. This results in a different taste but ensures all the valuable nutrients maintain in the food. As soon as you start heating and processing food, a lot of the original nutrients of the ingredients are lost.

But it is handmade which is kind of cool. The say on the packet that it’s hand moulded so surface variations may occur. Sounds a bit cryptic but you know what they mean when you open the packet. Instead of the perfect little squares in a block of Cadbury or Hershys, some of the chocolate squares are a little squished together. I like this, it makes it seem more boutique chocolate like. I wish I’d taken a picture of this to show you but I gobbled down the whole block before I thought about it.

Plamil chocolate is also dairy-free and it even won an award for best vegan chocolate, so eat up vegans!

The taste

Let’s be realistic. It will be difficult to ever find an alternative chocolate that tastes as good as Green & Black. So while Plamil does taste good and good enough for me to buy again, I’m still going to be ogling Green & Blacks and those Belgians truffles and wishing I was eating those instead.

Plamil chocolate is 72% cocoa so has a slightly bitter tang to it which I like. Being dairy-free also gives is a sharper and almost hallow taste which did leave me feeling as though I was missing something - the creamy sticky texture that dairy usually gives commercial chocolates.

I like the addition of the hemp seeds because they’re very good for you (I usually sprinkle them on my oatmeal in the morning) and they give the chocolate a texture almost similar to chopped almonds or rice crispy bits.

This is definitely the tastiest healthier alternative chocolate I’ve tried so far. I finished off the 100g block I bought in less than 24 hours, and I’m motivated enough to go and buy some more, at the very least to send back to friends in Brisbane as souvenirs!

The price

What I also love about Plamil’s chocolate is the price. Raw chocolate is harder to make so usually comes with a hefty price tag. Plamil’s isn’t raw so it’s significantly cheaper. A 100g block costs £1.99 which may sound expensive but everything in the UK is expensive so in comparison it’s actually really quite cheap. I bought a tiny packet of dried fruit at the national gallery today for £2.50 ..need I say any more.

Good news is, this chocolate is also available to be purchased online through the Plamil website, and at a scattering of stores across the globe (including Australia!). Go here for more info - http://www.plamilfoods.co.uk/stockists.htm

Fran Kerr is the founding editor of High on Health. To cure your acne, sign up to Fran's FREE acne cure mini-course or download her latest how to guide, Eat Away Your Acne.

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