Is there a day that goes by that I don’t have a craving for chocolate? In the late afternoon, I find myself reaching for a chocolate-y pick-me-up. It’s really become an addiction. I have been looking for a healthy alternative to chocolate and have found it with Chocolero.

Hop over to Chocolero’s website and you will see just what I mean. They are encouraging cocoa farmers to switch to the healthier, legal growing of cacao, used in the production of their chocolate bars. Their mission is to turn every cocalero into a chocolero. They are a citizen-led enterprise and want to assist the official alternative development programmes, using their three tools:

• • Fairtrade: Guarantee a decent income for farmers who opt to grow cacao

• • Microcredit: Lend them the necessary funds to convert their fields
  • Philanthropy: Help associations who treat and prevent addiction

Each bar of Chocolero sold will protect 1m² of cacao-cultivating land for one season. This will help in three ways –

• • The individual cacao farmers of Latin America will find the peace and security

• • The source of provisions for drug traffickers will die out, affecting their profits
  • Consumers enjoy high-quality chocolate and the use of cocaine decreases

Chocolero – A Healthy Alternative

I think some people think I’m lying when I say I prefer dark, cacao-rich chocolate to the sugar-laden sweet treat bars of yesteryears. I don’t know if it’s my brain loading up on all that endorphin releasing serotonin promoting happy chemicals that tells me to love it, but I really do prefer it. Give me a 70%+ bar of chocolate and I’m happy as!

AND when the chocolate bar has a positive impact on the lives of the farmers growing the cacao, then all the more reason to feel happy eating that bar! It’s a healthy alternative to those milky chocolate bars in your kitchen cupboard.

Our Chocolero Experience

They very kindly sent me a few bars to the office for us to try; milk (38% cacao), dark (71% cacao) and moka (55% cacao). I love the on-pack messaging – “Stop Drugs Try Chocolate” and the bar gauge showing how cut or pure the cacao is – brilliant referencing to the turnaround that the brand is making in the lives of the farmers.

The milk chocolate was smooth and buttery, as all milk chocolate should be, it was a real hit with Mr BB (the sugar addict when it comes to confectionery). The dark chocolate was rich and velvety,

with complex flavours just the way I like them. The real winner for me, however, was the moka bar – coffee meets quality cacao chocolate creating quite simply a delicious bar of chocolate. A healthy alternative to my coffee addiction as well!

Huge thanks to Chocolero for sending us these delicious bars to try. To get your hands on your own visit www.chocolero.com