Who loves a chocolate biscuit? Me, Me, Me !!!
Now I love a biscuit dunked in my tea, but I haven’t bought mainstream biscuit brands for a while now. Many of them have contained palm oil or vegetable oils and super high levels of sugar which I try to avoid, and frankly ingredient labels on biscuits have SO many ingredients with codes and numbers, at times it’s too overwhelming for me to work out is it healthy or not. So I try to avoid them. But that hasn’t stopped me looking for an alternative, being a biscuit lover and all.
On a visit earlier this year to one of my favourite local stores Urban Market Wholefoods, Dan the owner introduced me to the Leda Nutrition range of products and I’ve been hooked ever since. Leda has been producing gluten and dairy free health food bars since 1996, to cater for increasing dietary and allergenic requirements. Equally important to them was the growing number of health conscious consumers seeking healthier snacking alternatives. You might remember a post I did a while back on Leda Bars, this was their first ever product development, great as an energy or breakfast bar.
Since then they have branched out and offer a wide range of healthier alternative biscuits and snacks.
Enter Choculence. A luxurious chocolate sandwich biscuit smothered in decadent REAL chocolate.
Like seriously – even the name sounds indulgent.
Ok, so when I bought my first box earlier in the year, I had planned on reviewing them then. But they were SO good I ate the whole box and had no product to photoshoot. Oops. The next box I shared with my sister and a friend, but mostly I ate them again – so no photos possible. Double oops!
Since then, Leda kindly gifted me some samples of their range, so this time I took the photo first ha ha!
So what’s so good about them?
Let’s start with the ingredients list:
REAL Chocolate (26%) [sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, soy lecithin, natural flavours – vanilla], sugar, tapioca flour, besan flour, rice bran oil, cocoa butter, cocoa powder, natural flavours – vanilla, raising agent – sodium bicarbonate, salt. Chocolate contains minimum 40% cocoa solids. Made without Palm Oil.
Leda is very conscious of the concerns regarding Palm Oil and the increasing social responsibilities of sustainable development and their goal is to eliminate palm oil from all their products. Choculence is one of their palm oil free products.
And importantly they taste AH-MAZING. Obviously because I ate the product shoot samples – twice!
Now I would say that as they contain a higher level of sugar (still less than mainstream brands) I wouldn’t be having too many in one sitting, but I feel much better eating one of these occasionally compared to their mainstream competition, which contain even higher sugar levels, non-disclosed flavourings and toxic food colourings you want to avoid.
This is one popular mainstream brand’s ingredients listing for you to compare:
Milk chocolate (38%) (sugar, milk solids, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, emulsifiers (e322: soy, e476), flavouring), wheat flour,sugar, vegetable oil, golden syrup, colours (e102, e110, e129, e133, e150), milk solids, cocoa, salt, raising agent (e500), emulsifier (e322: soy) and flavouring.
If you are after no added sugar occasional treat options, you might like to look at the Leda Baked Fruit Filled Bars range (I have tried them and they are YUM!) which I would also consider a good alternative to muesli bars as well. Or the banana flavoured Leda Bars which rely on natural dried fruits for their sweetness. Bear in mind both of these have a higher fructose level due to the fruit content.
Leda Choculence biscuits are available from selected Coles supermarkets (health section), health food stores, IGA supermarkets and independent supermarkets such as Urban Market Wholefoods or direct from www.ledanutrition.com
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