UPF, Sugar, Vegan, Zoe - the choices we made and why... - Russell and Atwell

UPF, Sugar, Vegan, Zoe - the choices we made and why...

 

Steve and I are fascinated about food, where it comes from, how it’s made and what it does to us...

...reading and seeking to understand as much as we can – from writers like the thought-provoking Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Cooked) and the mesmerising Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential), to the entertaining Jeffrey Steingarten (The Man Who Ate Everything), the more scientific Chris van Tulleken (Ultra Processed People) and Tim Spector (Food For Life), and the more environmentally and socially conscious Henry Dimbleby (Ravenous).  All incidentally are highly recommended reading.  

We love cooking and experimenting ourselves, from Steve trialling Miso paste in a recent Micro-Batch, to Giles cooking fresh fish on smoky wooden planks on his favourite Big Green Egg.

 

We’ve tried to bring all this fascination and understanding - on food, on the environment and above all on taste - into our chocolates.  It’s what leads us to the choices we’ve made – organic fresh double cream and organic fresh butter (instead of palm oil), British Wildflower honey (for some of the sugar) and Dorset Sea Salt (instead of flavour enhancers).  Ultimately everything is a choice - and we choose, as much as we possibly can, ‘real food’.  Just as Michael Pollan said "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."

We get approached by loads of companies wanting to sell us ‘ingredients’, but we choose to buy wherever we can directly from the producer – from Luker (Chocolate), Wainwrights (Honey), Cotteswold Dairy (Cream) and the Dorset Sea Salt Company.  These are typically small businesses like us, who are passionate about quality ingredients, ethically and sustainably produced.

Steve inspecting Wainwright Honey hives near Salisbury Plain.

So, when I (Giles) recently ‘did Zoe’, I couldn’t resist testing our chocolates against (ahem) a famous Swiss red spherical competitor. I fasted overnight and sat in the same chair with the same cup of builder’s tea (milk, no sugar) and ate the exact same weight in chocolates at the exact same time

What difference would our set of ingredients (as natural and real as possible) and method of production (a small-batch kitchen-process taking 2 days) make, when compared with mass-produced chocolate made with palm oil and various other ingredients?  You’ll have to read to the end of this blog to see the results of this test…

Fresh Chocolates being made

We are not the only ones interested in food!  And there are three key areas our consumers ask us about with increasing frequency – specifically what is our position and how do our chocolates fare – so we thought we’d answer them all in one place…

1) Why do you not sell a vegan chocolate?

First of all, our chocolates are all vegetarian, but they are not vegan. We are fundamentally about taste and real food – and we have found that organic fresh cream (from the Cotswolds) tastes exponentially better than alternative tropical oils that have typically come from halfway across the world.  And while oat milk is made locally in the UK and can taste pretty good, it is also substantially processed - the leading brand contains 13 ingredients to do the same as the single ingredient in our cream. As always, this is about choice.  We choose more taste and less processing, while our customers are also free to choose us… or not!

Giles talking nervously to Mike. one of the organic dairy farmers who supply our double-cream

2) Why do your chocolates contain sugar?

The first thing to say here is that we (and indeed all other chocolates) are an indulgent treat - we are not a health food, nor are we a meal replacement, we're a little moment of joy that you can choose to have (or avoid!) in your day. 

 

Sugar has been integral to chocolate-making since the modern chocolate bar was invented in the 1840s.  When used responsibly (and not lazily as a 'filler' ingredient), it works brilliantly to give sweetness and good mouthfeel to chocolate and frankly make it taste delicious.

 

True to these original chocolate foundations, sugar is therefore present in varying quantities in all of our chocolates, depending on the flavour (less in dark, more in milk), as a natural, minimally processed ingredient - alongside sustainable cocoa, organic fresh cream, wildflower honey and Dorset Sea Salt.  These are all kitchen cupboard ingredients that we have selected for taste and provenance, and where we also personally know the producers.

 

Of course, there are alternative chocolates out there with minimal or low sugar - such as ‘raw’ chocolates - but these can be an acquired taste!  Otherwise, they are often boosted by high-intensity sweeteners (sometimes natural, sometimes artificial), designed to fool your taste buds into thinking they are eating something sweet.  These rarely taste as good and are often manufactured through complex chemical processes. Many also have a laxative effect!

 

So, in the end, it is again about choices - we choose to use cane sugar (and a drop of wildflower honey) in our chocolates, because these are natural products and taste amazing, but we totally understand that different products with low or no sugar may suit some people better.

 

3) Are you UPF?

The answer to this is not straightforward. There are all sorts of complicated definitions of ‘Ultra Processed Food’, but in layman's terms it is said that a food is not ultra-processed if it is made only with ingredients you would find in a domestic kitchen - which therefore excludes chemical additives as colourings, preservatives, sweeteners, 'texturisers' etc.

So, for the centres of our chocolates, we take just a few kitchen cupboard ingredients, carefully chosen for their flavours and personality - e.g. Dorset sea salt, fresh organic Cotswolds cream and wildflower honey from Salisbury Plain.  No thickeners, no sweeteners, no colourings, no flavourings... no 'E' numbers!

We then use the least processing possible, mixing and shaping them just as you would at home.  The wonderful colour, texture and sweetness come from Steve's expertise as a chocolatier.  During the development stage he tests and re-tests each flavour until he gets the recipe just right.  Then, rather than using chemicals, we rely on the natural preservative properties of the wildflower honey (and the temperature of your fridge!) to keep them deliciously fresh for longer.

 

 

So far so good!

 

The catch is that the chocolate we use to enrobe the centres is technically seen as an ultra-processed food.  This is because the cocoa it is made from requires a degree of processing - including the addition of a trace of soy lecithin.  This acts as an emulsifier, to make the chocolate smooth, workable and suitably pleasant to eat.

 

One of the characteristics of UPF food is that they are designed to make you eat a lot - our chocolates in many ways are the opposite of this - packed with real ingredients that give you a BIG punchy flavour - so you are left satiated typically after 2-3 - Steve has very deliberately designed them this way to fill you up on flavour.

 

At this point in time, it is very difficult to find milk or mild dark chocolate that hasn't undergone at least this degree of processing.  For this reason, any product that includes chocolate will almost always be seen as ultra-processed.

 

 So, to summarise, we absolutely believe in the philosophy that the best foods use just a few high quality kitchen ingredients, minimally processed, BUT there is one element that's very challenging to avoid that is considered to be 'ultra-processed' - and that is in the chocolate shell.  So by definition, our chocolates would strictly be seen as ultra-processed too.  

 

Having said this, we genuinely believe we are at the best end of a very broad spectrum!

 

Drum-roll, back to chocolate and my home-test...

So, when my (personalised) Zoe results came through at the end of the programme, I was delighted to see that our ingredients really did make a  difference – giving me an ‘Enjoy regularly” recommendation for Russell and Atwell chocolates and three 'good' scores on sugar, fat and gut health.

 

And finally

We are not nutritionists, nor are we dieticians, we have chosen a handful of ingredients, minimally processed to make yummy chocolates – these are not a meal substitution, not a health food – they are meant to be a treat – but we figured, if you’re going to treat yourself, you might as well do it properly…

 

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