Raw Health : Zesty Orange Chocolate : A Goodness Direct Product Review

So as you know, I have been sent a few bits to review for the lovely guys and gals at Goodness Direct. The next item on the pile is the Raw Health Zesty Orange Chocolate!   Well, it is almost at the Best Before date, and, well, you want me to taste the best bits, right? 

 

The packaging is kinda groovy, a nice deep orange colour and the logo is good, it says RAW HEALTH - VIBRANT LIVING. The packet is a recyclable cardboard with a plastic film over the actual bar and the cardboard sleeve tells me it has 70g of intensely dark organic chocolate with the zing of zesty orange inside!  It has a lovely cut out at the top and you can just see how wonderfully dark the chocolate is!  The back of the packet tells me a little more about Raw Health. It says...

"ALIVE, ACTIVE AND PACKED WITH POWER"  

"At Raw Health, we use organic raw ingredients and where possible soak and sprout them to bring their natural vitality to life.  Then we make delicious snacks at low temperatures to ensure the health-giving nutrients and enzymes stay alive and well"

"ALIVE, ACTIVE AND PACKED WITH POWER"   Well, Raw Health have kind of made a rod for their own back there really didn't they. A Super tag line, it had just better live up to the hype now! 

It is gluten free, vegan and contains no added beet or sugar cane as you can see from the ingredients; cocoa butter, cocoa powder, agave nectar, orange zest 10%.

 Also the nutritional information is so much better than a dairy milk! No offence to you wonderful people at Cadbury because I love you so but this chocolate will not ensure you have a filling after gorging yourself daft on it!  Not that I would ever condone the gorging of sweets and chocolate in any way at all... if you live in some sort of freakish parallel universe where I could actually go a full day without a product of some kind with any sort of chocolate content!   Yes, even though it's chocolate the values below have no meaning to me what so ever! I am not a nutritionist, I just like food, so if you want to have your own teeth when you draw your pension remember to  be treatwise! The bar contains 70g of chocolatey goodness, so you can do your own maths!

Per 100g

Energy 2298kJ/503kcal, Protein 8g, Carbohydrates 34g of which sugars 21g, Fat 44g of which saturates 22g, Fibre 12g, Sodium 0.018g.

I've been waffling for ages and I haven't even opened it yet! I'm not really a massive lover of dark chocolate, I'm more of a milky girl but here goes nothing!  It smells super dark, and a lot more pungent than say Green and Blacks Maya Gold, but it is something rather different from that, I haven't smelled a chocolate like this before.  The pieces are quite small, which I like in a dark chocolate, they go down better than a large piece.  

So I ate a square, and I'm thinking of a word, YUCK! That is absolutely VILE! It tastes like how I imagine chocolate to taste before it actually becomes chocolate. Like the last gritty bit of cocoa in the bottom of your hot chocolate, all powdery and not dissolved. It tastes unprocessed, well, obviously, but it's worse than bitter and the aftertaste is not so good either. The texture was very obscure and not how chocolate products should feel in the mouth!  It tastes like I'm chewing on a spoonful of cocoa powder. It was bitty, and I am not sure if that was orange as the packaging claimed that it was chocolate with the zing of zesty orange and I did not taste orange at all, it had been totally overpowered by the gritty, intense cocoa like mingingness.


Then half way through the second square in walks K.  He's all like, "What have you got there Mummy?"  He has obviously used his tweenaged super-powers to spot the bar of chocolate on the desk next to me, and he is slowly edging towards it! I explained that I am trying it so I can post a review about it on my blog and then the words came! "Can I try some please?"  So I had to share!


Much to my surprise, he actually liked it, he read the packet and pointed out that it had no added sugar so he could really have another piece! Cheeky monkey! K decided that he liked the orange flavour and then concluded that it was the nicest dark chocolates he had ever eaten!  I also tried out a square on the unsuspecting Miss Best.  She didn't really think that much of it either!  K ate the rest. He told me to tell you it was good, but he didn't like it enough for me to get it again. So the conclusion we all came to was try it for yourself, every ones taste buds are different and my idea of chocolate hell is anothers chocolate heaven. You never know, you might like it!