Coco Polo, Stevia Sweetened 39% Cocoa Pure Milk Chocolate, All Natural, Non-GMO, No Sugar Added, 3-Ounce Bars (Pack of 5)
A bar of pure creamy milk chocolate. Taste our Stevia Sweetened bars in comparison with any luxury chocolate product, with or without sugar or sugar substitutes. The taste is wonderful. These milk chocolate bars contain real milk, and therefore minor amounts of the natural sugar lactose, a constituent of milk, are present. Lactose is a gentle and natural sugar. Only about 5% of the bar's total fat content is from milk. The remainder consists of natural fats from the cocoa bean (cocoa butter). Our milk chocolate bars contain no sulfites and are non-GMO. The milk is obtained from cows whose diet is free of artificial hormones (no rBST).The sweetening agent, Reb A, derived from the Stevia plant is natural but its strength makes using it effectively in fine foods such as luxury chocolate products difficult since the sweetening effect is, weight for weight, 300 times sweeter than sugar. We tried hundreds of formulations before presenting our Coco Polo bars which have a unique and completely wonderful taste andsmoothmouth-feel with no indication that the sweetness comes from Stevia.Stevia has been used in parts of South America for over a thousand years as a sweetening agent. It has been allowed for use in Japan and parts of Asia for decades but only recently, due to bureaucratic inertia, has it been allowed to be used in foods in the U.S.Adding Stevia to chocolate does not result in digestive difficulties which may occur with other sugar substitutes.. Stevia is also safe and effective for diabetics. One web site [http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2006/08/01/4813/steviaa-new-player-in-the-artificial-sweetener-game/] declares, "Rather than raise blood sugar like most other natural sweeteners, stevia actually lowers it. Research from the Journal of Phytomedicine shows that stevia helps control blood glucose and promotes insulin creation." This article was published in 2006 prior to theFDA approval of Reb A (extract of Stevia).