This Milk Chocolate Is Low in Sugar (and Crazy Delicious)

February 11, 2024

Courtesy of Oobli

Let me just say upfront that I’m a dark chocolate girl. For me, 70 percent is usually the minimum, and it’s not unusual to find me nibbling on a bar that’s 80 percent or even higher. I like the deep richness and flavor of the darker stuff.

So when the folks at Oobli invited me to try their milk chocolate, I agreed (I don’t turn down chocolate), since I had enjoyed their darker variety in the past. I didn’t think I’d love it, but hey, I’d give it a shot.

I’m here to tell you that I was wrong. This milk chocolate is truly delicious. It’s rich and luscious, has a lovely silky texture, and it’s sweet but not cloying.

The best part: It’s low in sugar, and has no artificial sweeteners. How low? A 1.5-ounce serving of the Cocoa Dreams bar has – wait for it – 4 grams of sugar, and only 1 gram of added sugar. Compare that to a 1.5-ounce serving of Hershey’s, which has 22 grams of added sugar, or Dove, which has about 24. It’s no joke.

And this is milk chocolate – even a really dark chocolate bar, like Chocolove Extreme (one of my faves), which is 88 percent cocoa, has about 5 grams of added sugar in a 1.5-ounce serving. So 1 gram of added sugar in a sweet milk chocolate bar is bananas.

How do they do it?

The trick to this chocolate is the use of sweet proteins. These plant-derived elements add a lot of sweetness – some are thousands of times sweeter than regular sugar – but without the caloric and carbohydrate load of sugar and other sweeteners.

Am I getting protein in this chocolate, too?

Though the body digests these sweet proteins like other proteins, breaking them down into their component amino acids, eating this chocolate isn’t like eating a protein-rich food, such as chicken or fish. The amount of sweetener is too small to give you a big protein boost. Of course, if you want chocolate and protein at the same time, there are always protein powders for that.

What’s the downside?

One drawback here is that milk chocolate doesn’t have the same health benefits as dark. Cocoa beans contain flavonols, and these compounds are linked to processes in the body that promote blood flow. This lowers blood pressure, which is good for heart health. Plus, better blood flow includes the brain, too, so flavonols are good for cognition. Flavonols also have antioxidant properties, so they can help fight aging-related cell damage.

The more cocoa in your chocolate – that is, the higher the percentage – the more flavonols you’re getting. The Oobli milk chocolate bars have 45 percent cocoa; compare that to a dark bar with upwards of 70 percent, and that’s far fewer flavonols.

Of course, if you’re eating chocolate strictly for the flavonols (first of all, really?), you can always go with Oobli’s darker bars, which have 72 percent cocoa, and the same low sugar.

The details

Oobli’s milk chocolate comes in 4 varieties: Cocoa Dreams (plain), Almond Crunch (my fave), Let’s Go Nuts (with peanuts), and Crisp ‘n Rice. The dark chocolate comes in Silky Smooth (plain), Almond Toasty, Sweet ‘n Salty, and Razzle Dazzle (raspberry). A pack of 4 bars is $18.39.

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