Coco Un-a-i: The Sugar-free Chocolate
Chocolate might be considered unhealthy, but companies like Coco-Unai are here to provide an alternative.
Coco Unai offers chocolate, which has UN -Apologetic -Ingredients. It is created using natural, high-quality ingredients with a big percentage of cocoa. Instead of sugar, the chocolate contains natural sweeteners. This makes it, not only delicious but also low in calories and carbs and high in fibre.
The creator behind Coco Unai, Alice, started the company when she was in her final year of university. Being a sweet food lover, she struggled to find an alternative to chocolate, which did not contain sugar.
‘I always had a sweet tooth and constantly, I wasn’t trying to cut out sugar and have no sweet tooth anymore, I still wanted sugary things and doughnuts and sweets, I just didn’t want that sugar rush, so I was actively looking for sweets and chocolates that are sugar-free.’
Alice found that the sugar-free sweets had bad packaging and unpleasant taste. That is why she decided to create her own chocolate company. In 2018, she turned her dream into reality and started making sugar-free confectionery. Later, her passion helped her create Coco Unai.
‘I tailored it down to chocolate mostly because of the recipe and being able to manipulate the sweeteners and work out a good combination, it just kind of came out more naturally to chocolate than sort of trying to boil down sweets.’‘My biggest niche was just sort of nice tasting and just that high quality that really wasn’t there around that time.’
While the company that Alice gets her cocoa from is not actually fair trade certified, it is still associated with fair trade practices.
‘I am all for fair trade, and I try to go down a route of that, especially when I do bean to bar, and I am having to buy my beans.’
To witness the process behind chocolate making- that of cocoa farming, Alice travelled to Indonesia. She had friends who were missionaries and helped farmers with the chocolate and life well fair.
‘It was just really interesting to learn, from my perspective I usually just get the beans pre-roasted and I just put them in my machines and go from there. So it was so interesting to see ripe from the cocoa trees to the pods to them getting dried out… roasted…cracked which is noting I had experienced before. Being able to meet guys out there and see how they make the chocolate, see similarities. It was a really interesting experience and I think it was so great for me to have that even that chat with someone kind of in a similar position but on the other side of the world.’
Alice wanted to use her friends cocoa beans from Indonesia, but, when It actually came down to the nitty gritty and legalities of it, it seemed difficult.
‘For me starting out it just wasn’t going to be possible because in the UK we have a lot of legal laws for where we can buy our raw ingredients to and then sell on so they all needed to be from UK certified companies. I wasn’t able to use my Indonesian friend’s, but I would have loved to, if I had the opportunity.’
What she learned from her trip to Indonesia, was that it is difficult for farmers to get their cocoa certified as fairly traded. While the Indonesian company that Alice worked for provided jobs and paid a good salary to their staff, they were not interested in certification.
‘It is one of these big corporate things again, where you seem to have to go through 101 loopholes to get certified and even then it is quite difficult. Just the amount of legal stuff they would have to do to get fairly traded, I don’t think even they were going to go down that route.’
Alice found it interesting that farmers were not actually motivated by money.
‘The biggest thing is a lot of them, the little island that they work on. A lot of them had cocoa trees in their garden and they would not experience the great amount of farming that they could do from it and they did it now and then, it was more of a hobby and that kind of suited them and their lifestyle.’
The cocoa beans that Coco-Unai use come from West Africa.
‘I chose them particularly because I like the sort of mellow taste they give, they’re not too strong or sometimes they can be quite bitter or just very musky.’
Alice thinks people should be more aware of the sugar that regular chocolate contains.
‘I think people don’t realise the massive affect that sugar can have on your mood, on the way you’re thinking…. How you feel. I think everyone should try and cut it out and see how they get on, I think its quite a learning experience.’
While chocolate containing high amounts of sugar can provide quick energy or the so-called ‘sugar rush’, it can also cause the subsequent reverse effect or a ‘sugar slump’.
‘It gives you that sugar rush, but you always get that sugar fall after. It is definitely something I realised more ’,Alice says.
Because Coco Unai’s chocolate is sugar-free, it does not cause this effect.
‘It’s not necessarily not sweet, it is just you’re not getting that sugar high, and that sugar rush and…. that mood swings and all that around the actual sugar itself that I think you’re not getting from a sugar alternative, and yeah, its got sweeteners, but it doesn’t react in the same way.’
‘Being a start-up, it is one thing if I’m just testing different things or trying new flavours out, or trying even new products, it is something that I know I can to my subscribers, they usually get really quite good money's worth from it regards of the amount of products they get for the money, it is great to get their feedback.’
For more information about Coco Unai and their chocolate, visit their website: https://coco-unai.co.uk/
