At ZoRaw, we believe that a healthy lifestyle should include eating what you love, guilt-free. Although there are many lists of dark chocolate health benefits out there, a lot of other brands’ dark chocolate benefits often obscure some facts to make them seem like healthier chocolate than they really are. Plus, they say nothing about their milk chocolates’ health benefits.
We made it our mission to be transparent with you all. This is the truth: we make sweet-tooth-satisfying milk and dark chocolate with a clean ingredient deck that’s actually healthy!
By combining our expertise in biochemistry and food science with our passion for chocolate and healthy living, we crafted a 7-ingredient, organic, protein-packed chocolate bar with low sugar. All of our ingredients are keto-friendly—high in healthy fats and low in net carbs.
In addition to a sprinkle of love, a ZoRaw bar consists of the following ingredients:
- Cocoa butter
- Cocoa mass
- Erythritol
- Stevia
- Inulin
- Grass-fed whey protein
- Sunflower Lecithin
- Milk powder (only in our milk chocolate bars)
Beyond coming together to create a delicious chocolate bar, each carefully selected ingredient has benefits that may surprise you! Let’s break down the health benefits of chocolate bar ingredients by ZoRaw.
Cocoa Butter
While you may already know that the main ingredient in chocolate is cocoa powder (roasted, ground-up cacao beans), there is another ingredient that is crucial to chocolate-making—the creamy, fatty emulsifier that blends all of the ingredients together, known as cocoa butter.
Loaded with vitamins and healing antioxidants, you may already use cocoa butter to achieve healthy, smooth skin and hair...but it’s also edible! In raw form, cocoa butter comes from cacao beans that grow on the Theobroma cacao tree.
Cocoa butter is made up of 100% healthy fats including oleic acid, palmitic acid, and stearic acid, which double as antioxidants that fight free radicals. Essentially, free radicals are unstable atoms that can cause damage to cells, causing illness and aging. Cocoa butter is also an ideal ingredient for anyone on a ketogenic diet because just one tablespoon of raw cocoa butter consists of 14g of total healthy fats!
Cocoa Mass
As with cocoa butter, cocoa mass are derived from cocoa beans and naturally have a bitter, chocolatey flavor. Cocoa mass is dried after harvesting, fermented and cracked. The result is small, dark nibs.
These rich nibs are packed with nutrients, antioxidants, and have anti-inflammatory properties. They are also made almost entirely of either healthy fats or fiber and are an excellent choice for anyone on a keto diet, as they have a negligible net carb impact.
ZoRaw bars, in particular, contain sustainably sourced cocoa nibs from Ecuador’s rare, highest-quality Arriba (also known as Nacional) cocoa beans, which are processed as minimally as possible. These cocoa beans never come into contact with any chemicals, pesticides, or additives!
Erythritol
Erythritol is the most favourable sugar alternative in the market. This is because, unlike all other sugar alcohols, erythritol is absorbed into the bloodstream before it reaches the colon, making it very unlikely to cause digestive issues.
This sugar alternative is ideal for a low carb/keto diet, or for anyone who generally wants to cut back on sugar intake...how sweet is that? Additionally, there’s extensive research suggesting that erythritol is actually good for your teeth (when has that ever been true for sweets?) and may reduce heart disease. In our ZoRaw bars, we use a non-GMO, naturally sourced form of erythritol.
Stevia
Stevia is a natural sweetener derived from the Stevia plant. Stevia leaves have been used for hundreds of years by those in Paraguay and Brazil to sweeten their food.
This natural sweetener is also popular because it has no impact on the glycemic index, and we use just a hint of stevia to give our chocolate its sweet, delectable taste. Because what’s the point of healthy chocolate that doesn’t taste good?
Inulin
Inulin is completely natural and sourced from chicory root. It is one of the most prevalent fibre-boosting ingredients in food. In ZoRaw chocolate bars, we use it for just that, and it also provides a natural sweetness.
Grass-Fed Whey Protein
Every ZoRaw chocolate bar is packed with 12g of protein. We use grass-fed whey protein from New Zealand which is sourced from hormone-free cows and serves as an excellent source of additional protein with no associated carbs!
Sunflower Lecithin
Traditionally, chocolate makers use soy lecithin to improve the consistency and viscosity of their chocolate, although it is typically derived from a genetically modified source. Instead, ZoRaw uses sunflower lecithin—an all-natural ingredient!
There are many health benefits associated with sunflower lecithin, including lower cholesterol, improved digestive health, support of skin health, and even improved brain health. You read that right—this chocolate just might make you smarter. ;)
Milk Powder
The milk powder we use in our milk chocolate bars is rBST free. In case you want to impress your friends, rBST stands for recombinant bovine somatotropin (try saying that 10 times fast!) This means that our milk powder is derived from hormone-free cows.
rBST-free milk powder is a good source of various vitamins, such as vitamins A, D, E, and K, and contributes to a bit of the low sugar content in ZoRaw bars. Overall, the net impact is quite low, contributing to only 2 grams of net carbs, and we believe the wholesome creamy taste it provides is a fair trade-off, wouldn’t you say?
There you have it, all of the ingredients you can find in a ZoRaw bar. No hidden ingredients, no secrets, no catch, just a nutritious and delicious chocolate bar’s health benefits!
We are so excited to connect with fitness enthusiasts and chocolate lovers alike :) You can follow us on our journey to spread awareness about healthy food and wellness, one ZoRaw Chocolate bar at a time, in our future blog posts, and on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram!
