Bariatric Foodie Play with your food
Folks, this is not a drill. We are talking about actual calcium chocolate.
Not a chocolate wafer. Or a chocolate chew. Or some Fakey McFakester tasting ambiguous chocolate thing.
No. This is a piece of chocolate. That is also your calcium supplement.
About ProCare Health
ProCare Health is a website that sells a variety of health and bariatric related products, including this chocolate we’re about to explore! I first experienced ProCare Health at the Obesity Action Coalition “Your Weight Matters” Convention. I’m not going to lie. I was drawn in by the chocolate! But what made me invite them to sponsor the Bariatric Foodie Pledge is their commitment to providing high-quality, delicious products to help weight loss surgery patients achieve success.
Calcium Dark Chocolate
Ok so you know how there’s that meme on the internet about chocolate being a health food because it’s made from beans? Wait…you know what…let’s just look at it.
Well, this product sorta brings that to fruition. Let’s talk about the set-up.
The chocolates come in bags of 30 and each are individually wrapped. Here are the stats for each chocolate (they can also be found on the ProCare Health website).
I personally would advise you to refrigerate the chocolates because they do melt quite easily. These are dark chocolate squares, not milk chocolate. So take heed! I personally think that’s a good thing as dark chocolate has more of those beneficial flavanoids, and is lower in sugar than milk chocolate.
Taste, mouth-feel, yadda…
All too often products that sound too good to be true…well…they actually are too good to be true.
In the spirit of that, you might be wondering: “Is this really chocolate? Like…for real?”
I’m here to attest that, yes, it is really chocolate! It looks like chocolate, feels like chocolate, tastes like (dark) chocolate. Many calcium products are chalky (because calcium is chalky) but this product somehow incorporates that without any discernible change to the texture of the chocolate. The squares are about the size of those individual Lindt squares, if you’ve ever seen those.
Biting into it you, get that slight bitterness of a dark chocolate, along with the sweetness. The mouth-feel is actually pretty legit. Again, no chalkiness that I could pick up and it’s easy to chew. Again, these melt easily in warmer temps so you may find yourself with chocolate “leave-behind” on your fingers if you indulge in this in the summertime or in a particularly warm area.
As for whether I like the taste? Let’s just say that by the time I finished my little photo shoot, I had consumed more than one dose of calcium for the day. I put the rest of the bag in the freezer to remedy that and since then I’ve extracted approximately ONE chocolate each day. (Yes, folks. I, too, have rules to not go overboard!) In short: yes, I loved the taste!
Cost & Value
A 30-count bag of these is going to set you back $19.99. That comes out to $0.66 per chocolate. Now…technically the average post-op would need 3-4 of these a day in order to get in the ASMBS recommended amount of calcium for the day. But. These suckers are 50 calories, 4g carbs each so I do NOT recommend you do that.
Instead, I recommend you keep these on hand as your daily chocolate treat, and keep rolling with a lower calorie, regular calcium supplement. In that respect, a bag will last you a month. I personally don’t think $19.99 is too much to pay to have a guilt-free chocolate experience! Your mileage may vary.
Would I buy it?
Two words: Hell yes. In fact, I’ve already bought it. Several times! And I hide it from my family so they don’t eat it. (I let the girls try a square each and now they swear they are calcium deficient. I handed them some good ol’ Citrical and told them to back off my dark chocolate!)
So yes, I personally endorse this product emphatically. I love chocolate. And with them being individually wrapped (and me keeping them in the freezer) I don’t go overboard on them. So for me, it’s a win-win!
And that’s my two cents. But what say you? To learn more about ProCare Health, visit their website. And tell them Nik sent ya!
