If you have a sweet tooth, it is probably your worst nightmare when someone says that you can’t be eating chocolates and hoping to lose weight at the same time.
What if I told you that you don’t have to give up on the joy of eating chocolate in order to lose weight?
Yes. I truly believe that eating foods that give us joy can go hand in hand with health.
Chocolate included.
If that makes you roll your eyes in disbelief, I’d ask you to be a little patient with me.
I actually ended up birthing the idea of a clean chocolate based on this belief.
A chocolate with no refined sugar and no chemical additives.
World over, chocolates are bought and gifted as an expression of love and joy.
Yet, the commercial varieties available in the market often end up giving us less joy and more worry.
In my work that looks like weight gain and diabetes.
At first when I started working as a health coach I thought that everyone needs to switch to plant based whole foods on day one. But as I worked with more and more people, it made me realize that everyone is at a different stage in their journey and that’s completely okay. That is when it occurred to me – What if I can make their existing food options healthier without changing much of what they are eating? – as a first step.
This I believe has been quite revolutionary for my clients and has given them brilliant results.
While grains and oils seemed easier to change, when it came to sweets I was literally left scratching my head.
Then the idea hit me – How about a cleaner chocolate? (use code PARUL05 for a discount)
What if one could upgrade the ingredients to make a better chocolate?
This is when I approached Paul & Mike, chocolatiers from Kerala and suggested that we could collaborate with Two Brothers Organic Farm – an honest farmer owned brand whose products I had been consuming and recommending to my clients for a little less than a year.
The idea was to use their jaggery to sweeten the chocolates instead of the regular processed white sugar. As the idea evolved, we decided to stick to all natural ingredients.
The only ingredients used were – organic handmade jaggery, organic native peanuts, organic cocoa beans and cocoa butter. The two variants available are – Jaggery Nibs and Peanut Chikki. (Use code Parul05 for a discount)
Although jaggery had been used as an ingredient in chocolates by some brands, the idea here was twofold:
– to take it a step further with 100% clean ingredients
– change the way people viewed dark chocolates by giving it an indigenous twist. Dark chocolate is usually viewed as a Western product, but this chocolate infused with native Indian ingredients would end up marrying the East with the West.
The real reason behind putting in so much thought and efforts into this was the fact that commercial varieties of chocolate available have a lot of hormone-disrupting additives. Not only are they unnatural but are also highly contested when it comes to their health impacts.
Some of these ingredients are:
– emulsifiers
– hydrogenated oils
– artificial colours
– milk solids
While I was reading about these ingredients, the question that kept coming up in my mind was – Would I ever feed any of the these to my loved ones – my parents, partner or friends?
If there is anything that 2020 has taught us, it is about how precious our health and lives are.
Good health is the basis of all else in life – career, money, relationships.
How can we then put in our bodies, ingredients which end up shortening it?
With this collaboration we wanted to create food (not a food like substance which wasn’t food at all) that you could savor without unknowingly sabotaging your health.
Food is sacred to us, just as our bodies are.
However, it took the two brands – Two Brothers Organic Farms (use code Parul05 for a discount) and Paul & Mike several rounds of perfecting the recipe and getting the right flavor profile before it was finally launched in the market.
According to me this is a piece of our hearts.
Just pure love.
From us to you.
This is undoubtedly one of the best gifts you can give your loved ones.
Let them savor the goodness without compromising their health.
Fun Trivia
Contrary to popular belief, the best dark chocolates do NOT come from Switzerland or Belgium. Those brands are simply marketed better while it is chocolate from smaller corners of the world that lend better taste. This is why I’d say – give this Indian dark chocolate an honest chance to show you how amazing it can be.
Note
While jaggery is a natural sweetener, excess consumption can still lead to weight gain just like over-eating fruits can. However, when eaten in moderation it is a brilliant replacement for your regular chocolate. So dig in.
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