Review: Maine Cottage Foods Dark Chocolate Almond Bark by Amy Dungan

Maine Cottage Foods Dark went out of business around 2012. Another great Sugar-Free Chocolate Almond Bark is made by Asher’s Chocolates and can be found on Amazon.com.

I’m a chocolate fanatic, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m pretty sure you could dip just about anything in chocolate and make it edible. Since starting my low-carb lifestyle in 2001 I’ve tried several brands of sugar-free chocolates. While most of them taste good, those containing sugar alcohols usually start a storm raging in your gut that would make a tornado jealous. Believe me, you do not want to suffer through a toilet tornado. For this reason I am very cautious with any product containing sugar alcohols. Some bother me more than others, but those that contain maltitol mess me up pretty bad, and I’m far from being the only with these issues.

Maine Cottage Foods must have heard all our maltitol induced tummy rumblings all the way from their facility in Maine because they made a product that has no sugar, no gluten and best of all – no maltitol.

At just 2.4 net carbs per serving, their Dark Chocolate Almond Bark is now a favorite at our house. My husband and kids keep asking me when I’m going to buy more. Our 8 ounce bag arrived with two large square chunks of almond bark inside, which made about 6 servings. Every time someone walked by the bag, it was opened and a little hunk tore off. I eventually had to hide it from sight, because it was disappearing faster than cheese in front of Speedy Gonzales. In short, it tastes good. Really good. And to my pleasant surprise, no tornadoes after enjoying it.

Maine Cottage Foods offers four delicious flavors of chocolate bark: Dark Chocolate Almond, Dark Chocolate Macadamia, Dark Chocolate Pecan and Milk Chocolate Almond.

Now keep in mind that these products do contain erythritol, which is a milder form of sugar alcohol. Most people have very little trouble with erythritol, especially if kept to the recommended serving size per day. But that doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed completely rumble free. Everyone is different. I had, at the minimum, a little over one serving in a day and had no problems what so ever. Since nuts are not allowed during the induction phases of most low-carb plans, I’d recommend saving this tasty treat for later phases of weight loss.

Nutritional info for the Dark Chocolate Almond Bark

Per 1.3 ounce serving:

• Calories: 180
• Fat: 16 g
• Cholesterol: 1 mg
• Sodium: 1 mg
• Total Carbs: 17 g
• Fiber: 9 g
• Sugars: 0.6 g
• Sugar Alcohols (erythritol) 5.6 g
• Impact Carbs: 2.4 g

If you are one who chooses to count all sugar alcohols in your net carb counts, then this is still a pretty good treat at 8 carbs. Regardless, be sure to watch your portion sizes and remember that items like this are meant to be consumed on occasion, especially if you are still in the process of losing weight. But if you need a good chocolate fix, I think you’ll find this tames the chocolate monster quite well.

Over all I give this product 4 stars. It’d be a full 5 stars if there were no sugar alcohols at all. But then, in a perfect world I could eat whatever I wanted too… and in reality we all know where that got me.

Maine Cottage Foods Dark went out of business around 2012. Another great Sugar-Free Chocolate Almond Bark is made by Asher’s Chocolates and can be found on Amazon.com.

© 2010 by Amy Dungan. Article and photograph used by kind permission of the author. Send Amy your comments to Amy Dungan.