Category: Snacks

• Beyond Good chocolate – review and ethical rating

  Beyond Good is a chocolate company that aims to benefit cacao farmers in Madagascar and Uganda through direct trade purchasing. Most of their finished chocolate bars are now manufactured in Madagascar, employing local people and paying a decent wage. The company, formerly known as Madécasse, was established in 2006 by two Peace Corps volunteers who served in Madagascar.

  We make chocolate at origin in Madagascar, working directly with cocoa farmers to buy premium cocoa and employing local Malagasy people at our chocolate factory. Our supply chain is unique, 100% traceable and fully transparent. We’re currently expanding our mission into Uganda.  – Beyond Good.

  I picked up a bar of the Beyond Good chocolate – the Uganda 73% bar with Crispy Rice – at the Grocery Outlet for $1.49 (it’s normally $3-4). I recently posted on the Top 10 Ethical Chocolate Brands on the Green Stars Project site so I’m trying to learn about brands that I was previously not very aware of. It turns out that Beyond Good was a good place to start!

  Review of Beyond Good’s Uganda bar with Crispy Rice

  The back of the package contains some tips on appreciating chocolate (slow down, let it melt in your mouth, search your back teeth for flavor..!). I actually love this chocolate and rate it highly – it has a great chocolatey taste, creamy texture, and a nice balance between sweet and bitter (73% cacao). Beyond Good chocolate is made from flavorful Criollo cocoa beans, which are much less common, accounting for around 3% of global cocoa production. I would totally buy this Beyond Good chocolate again and look forward to trying more of their bars.

  The crispy rice also works really well in the chocolate, providing an experience that would nicely replace conventional bars like Kit Kats. An upgrade rather than a replacement – the quality of the Beyond Good chocolate is, not surprisingly, much better than a Kit Kat, requiring less to satisfy cravings. One of the many problems with mainstream chocolate bars is that they are designed to be scarfed and then craved again soon after. We tend eat a lot of them and this comes with the cost of a high carbon footprint and widespread deforestation in West Africa.

  It seems fitting that these Beyond Good bars contain rice as some of the land used to grow the cacao was formerly used to grow rice – now it’s a forest again!

  Instead of chopping down forests to pave the way for additional plot land, the farmers have been converting rice lands into new shaded areas where cocoa pods sprout alongside banana, jackfruit and citrus trees. – TriplePundit

  Beyond Good – Direct Trade cacao and manufacturing in Africa

  I’m currently writing a chapter on population growth for my book on ethical consumerism. It’s really important to know that many of our global problems have a root in population growth. The more people on the planet, the more resources are needed to sustain them. Population growth is directly linked to the standard of living – the human population in the Global South (developing countries) is still growing while it has now stabilized in most developed countries. Around 10% of all women in sub-Sarahan Africa give birth between the ages of 15 and 19.

  Improving the standard of living in the Global South is the best way to curb population growth. Obviously we shouldn’t even need this justification! An adequate standard of living, access to education and family planning resources are basic human rights. But it’s not at all easy for a farmer living on the poverty line to be able to send their kids to school – many kids will work on the farm instead, helping to make ends meet. The supply chain for cacao destined for commodity markets, to be eventually purchased by Nestle, Hershey, and the other big chocolate manufacturers looks like this:

  

  In West Africa, where most of the commodity cacao is sourced by the major chocolate makers, farmers make between 50 and 70 cents a day. The cocoa farmers that Beyond Good works with earn $3.84 per day, on average. They earn over five times more because the supply chain contains no middlemen – it looks like this:

  

  We don’t work with middlemen that chip away at farmer profit. Making chocolate at source is a win, win, win situation. Farmers earn more, customers get a high-quality product (since we’re able to test the cocoa before purchasing it) and we’re able to keep our prices lower than other makers of premium chocolate since we don’t have to pay for the multiple levels of middlemen, exporters, and importers. – Beyond Good.

  Africa is the leading producer of agricultural raw materials like cocoa, coffee, and vanilla but these items are exported and processed in Europe or North America. By producing at source in Madagascar we’re able to add value to the local economy, create skilled jobs and produce a finished product that creates more economic activity. – Beyond Good

  

  Beyond Good’s CEO, Tim McCollum, says that the consequences of their farmers earning five to six times more than cocoa farmers in West Africa have been remarkable. Not only are they more likely to be able to send their children to school, but farmers also began practicing regenerative farming because they had the money to invest in it. It’s pretty hard to think about the environment when you’re on the poverty line, but once they escape poverty and are able to look after their families, the farmers often turn to thinking about nature.

  You need to deal with poverty before people can care about the environment. Once our farmers were financially secure, they started to think longer-term – Treehugger

  Beyond Good – cacao and deforestation

  Here are a few quotes from a Yale 360 investigation into the role that the chocolate industry has played in the deforestation of West Africa:

  In the past half-century, few countries have lost rainforests as fast as the Ivory Coast. More than 80 percent of its forests are gone.

  Around 40 percent of the country’s cocoa crop — more than a tenth of the world’s chocolate bars — is grown illegally in the country’s national parks and 230 supposedly protected government-owned forests.

  Most cocoa is grown in monocultures of what is known as the full-sun system, requiring the removal of all surrounding trees.

  Very few international companies directly source from protected areas,” says Richard Scobey, president of the World Cocoa Foundation. But they buy from middlemen who do.

  Beyond Good’s cacao suppliers are shown on an interactive map, each with a photo and brief bio, including the size of their farm (often just a few acres) and even an estimate of the number of trees. Most of them have had a relationship with Beyond Good for over five years.

  The information on the number of trees per farm is really useful because there are separate counts for “cacao trees” and “total trees.” The largest producer (Théodule) has the following stats:  Total Trees: 94404 and Cocoa Trees 73958. So there are around 20,000 non-cocoa trees on this farmer’s land, or around 20% of the total number of trees.

  A typical parcel of cocoa forest in our supply chain will have 75% cocoa trees and 25% shade trees – Beyond Good, on Treehugger

  According to a 2018 paper in Nature Sustainability, around 30% shade cover seems to represent an ideal compromise between crop yield, climate mitigation, climate adaptability, and biodiversity.

  Our results suggest that cocoa agroforests up to 30% cover are far superior to monocultures because they do not strongly compromise production, while at the same time they provide benefits for disease management, climate mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity conservation – Climate-smart sustainable agriculture in low-to-intermediate shade agroforests

  So, Beyond Good’s suppliers are close to that ideal level of shade cover, providing much more support for biodiversity and climate change mitigation than sun grown cacao.

  Beyond Good chocolate – Ingredients and Nutrition

  Beyond Good Crispy Rice, 73% Cocoa

  Ingredients: Organic cocoa beans, organic cane sugar, organic crispy rice, organic cocoa butter, organic vanilla extract.

  Nutrition Facts: Each 25 gram bar provides 10 g fat, 6 g sugar, 3 g fiber, and 2 g protein. Zero sodium.

  The bar is vegan, organic, Kosher, and gluten-free.

  

  Ethical rating for Beyond Good chocolate

  I think that Beyond Good chocolate deserve 5/5 Green Stars for social and environmental impact, based on these factors:

  • Beyond Good chocolate is a vegan product.
  • All of the ingredients (in my Uganda bar) are certified organic.
  • All bars are free of palm oil.
  • Beyond Good has a direct trade relationship with cacao farmers, who earn at least 5 times the average income for West African cacao farmers. This has a huge impact, on the quality of life, especially since Madagascans are generally poorer than West Africans.
  • Beyond Good’s chocolate is predominantly made in Madagascar and will soon also be made in Uganda. Most other chocolate makers just source the ingredients from commodity markets and then process it elsewhere.
  • Farmers report on both cacao and non-cacao trees on their property and it appears that the farms average at around 20-25% shade cover. These other trees enhance biodiversity and help mitigate climate change.

  

  Summary scores (out of 5) for Beyond Good chocolate:

  • 4.5 gold stars for quality and value
  • 5 green stars for social and environmental impact

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating!

  December 17, 2022

  Beyond Good chocolate, Direct Trade, ethical chocolate, Grocery Outlet, Madécasse, shade-grown cacao, social and environmental impact, Uganda

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• Simulate Nuggs – review & ethical rating

  Simulate Nuggs (v2.0) are on sale at the Grocery Outlet at $10 for a large 2 lb box of vegan chicken nuggets. That’s about 20% lower than the regular price – not bad, but not as good a deal as other meat substitutes available at the Grocery Outlet. But it looked like an interesting company so I bought a box for research purposes 😉

  Simulate is a plant-based food company that’s initially focused on vegan chicken nuggets, aka Nuggs. The founder, Ben Pasternak, was 15 years old when he received venture capital funding for his first company, a social networking app that has since shut down. Now the Australian entrepreneur is 23 years old and running Simulate in New York.

  Simulate Nuggs – review

  My first batch of Nuggs was dry and made a pretty poor impression, but that’s probably my own fault so I’ll strike it from the record. But, in my defense, the nuggets are thin a bit unforgiving on cooking temperature deviations. The Nuggs were redeemed in my second batch and my needle moved into the “might buy again” category. I say “might,” because there’s some stiff competition in the vegan nuggets world.

  I don’t like Simulate Nuggs as much as Beyond Chicken tenders or Quorn nuggets in terms of either flavor or texture but others seem to love them. Bon Appétit magazine ran a taste test of several brands of vegan chicken nuggets and placed Simulate Nuggs in about second place on account of the nice breading. They labeled Nuggs as “the fast-food replica,” on account of a crust that resembled a McDonald’s nugget. Unfortunately, they didn’t include the Beyond Chicken tenders, which I covered in a recent post – perhaps it’s too big to be considered a nugget?! Here’s a nice, in-depth video review that includes (mostly positive) ratings by people who normally eat meat-based nuggets:

  Because several companies make pretty good vegan nuggets, it may be easier to choose between them after considering their social and environmental impact. But all of them (at least, any of the brands that I’ve examined so far) are better than nuggets made from chicken meat (for example from McDonald’s) in terms of impact. So find one that you like, whether it’s Nuggs, Quorn, Beyond Meat, Impossible, or others (I’ll be reviewing nuggets from Impossible Foods and others soon.)

  Simulate Nuggs – Ingredients and Nutrition

  There’s some similarity between Simulate Nuggs and Beyond Chicken tenders in terms of ingredients, except for the main source of protein and fat. Simulate uses wheat protein and soybean oil while Beyond Meat uses fava bean protein and sunflower oil.

  Simulate Nuggs – Ingredients: Water, Textured Wheat Protein, Soybean Oil, Breadcrumbs (Enriched Wheat Flour [Enriched with Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid], Sugar, Rice Flour, Yeast, Salt, Extractives of Paprika), Enriched Wheat Flour, Soy Protein Isolate, Corn Flour, Modified Food Starch, Wheat Protein Isolate. Contains 2% or less of: Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, Methylcellulose, Tapioca Dextrin, Corn Starch, Yeast Extract, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Salt, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Black Pepper, Paprika, Dextrose, Red Pepper.

  Simulate Nuggs – Nutrition Facts: The nutritional content is also quite similar between Simulate Nuggs and Beyond Chicken tenders – the fat, fiber, sugar, and protein content are all pretty good while sodium is a little on the high side. But even though a serving of Nuggs provides 17% of our sodium daily allowance, I found that they tasted even better with a sprinkling of salt. I guess I’m a salt fiend, but the reviewer in the video above said the same thing – they taste underseasoned.

  

  Simulate Nuggs – product development inspired by tech

  Simulate’s founder, Ben Pasternak, is more of a tech entrepreneur than a food science expert, and this shows when you look at the model for improvement of Nuggs. Similar to software development, the recipe for Nuggs is tweaked from time to time, partly based on customer feedback. As each new version is rolled out, Simulate will list the changes that have been made, as you can see in the image below. For example, Nuggs v1.5 involved elimination of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and a 65% reduction in sodium content (wow – salt content used to more than twice as high!). The current version, Nuggs v2.0, involved some pretty big ingredient changes – the elimination of konjac, pea protein, seaweed, and wheat gluten.

  

  Ethical rating for Simulate Nuggs

  The other thing to note in the image above is Simulate’s statements about their ethos:

  • Highly processed
  • Pro GMO
  • Lab to Table

  It’s an amusing way to describe their principles and I appreciate the transparency, but unfortunately that’s the only information provided.

  As a research scientist who has worked in the genetic engineering field, I know many people who will support the pro-GMO stance. My opinion is that I support using genetically-modified microbes to make ingredients that would normally come from animal products. An example of that would be the milk protein produced in a fungus by Perfect Day, found in some products that I’ve reviewed here – Modern Kitchen cream cheese and Brave Robot ice cream. I’m not a fan of GMO crops, however – not exactly because of the genetic engineering part, but rather because the GM part is tightly bound to industrial agriculture practices that wage war on nature. When you buy GM seeds from Bayer/Monsanto you are almost always also buying into the heavy use of herbicides like glyphosate and pesticides such as neonics.

  I would therefore appreciate if Simulate would take their transparency to a meaningful level by discussing which ingredients are genetically-modified and why. The terms “highly processed” and “lab to table” are also quite glib and not very informative in the absence of more information. I know that some critics of plant-based meat substitutes claim that they are highly-processed compared to meat. I discussed this in a Green Stars Project post on Quorn and came to the conclusion that fermenting a fungus (similar to making beer) and preparing protein from it does not really equate to highly-processed. Yes, there is processing involved, but when you compare it to the artifice of raising animals intensively (horribly cramped conditions, bizarre roughage feedstocks, antibiotics, growth hormones, high-throughput slaughtering, etc.) the product is a lot less adulterated. 

  So, while I appreciate Simulate’s transparency in making these statements, I think that in the absence of further information they are unhelpful. Here’s my ethical score for Simulate Nuggs:

  I think that Simulate Nuggs deserve 3/5 Green Stars for social and environmental impact, based on these factors:

  • Simulate Nuggs is a vegan product. Adopting a plant-based diet is the top thing you can do to mitigate deforestation & climate change and to end animal cruelty and the insidious negative impact that the meat industry has on society.
  • The main ingredients, wheat and soy are generally far more sustainable than meat.
  • Simulate is not transparent about ingredient sourcing. Considering their pro-GMO stance, ingredients such as soybean oil may pose issues such as the use of neonics or displacement of rainforest.
  • If you would rather not support industrial agriculture then perhaps pass on this product, but it is still preferable to nuggets made from chicken meat.
  • Packaging for this 2 lb box is reasonably minimal – a plastic bag housed inside cardboard box.

  

  Summary scores (out of 5) for Simulate Nuggs:

  • 3.5 gold stars for quality and value
  • 3 green stars for social and environmental impact

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating!

  November 18, 2022

  Grocery Outlet, Nuggs review, Nuggs v2.0, Simulate Chicken nuggets, social and environmental impact, vegan chicken nuggets

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• Tony’s Chocolonely – sustainability, review

  Tony’s Chocolonely has been on a mission to change the chocolate industry – specifically to eliminate slavery and child labor in West Africa. Right now, you can buy a lovely Rainbow tasting pack of Tony’s Chocolonely bars at the Grocery Outlet for just $5 (normally around $13). The variety pack is a good way to try out six of them together and find your favorite. 

  Tony’s Chocolonely – Rainbow tasting pack

  Tony’s Chocolonely rainbow tasting pack contains six bars (each bar is 1.8 oz.) with the following varieties:

  • Milk Chocolate
  • Milk Chocolate Hazelnut
  • Milk Chocolate Caramel Sea Salt
  • Milk Chocolate Nougat
  • Dark Chocolate Almond Sea Salt
  • Dark Chocolate 70%

  I really like this variety pack – each bar is a good size for two servings (or one, if you’re hungry) and all flavors are worth trying. It’s also pretty & would serve as a nice little gift for someone. The bars are wrapped in paper and housed in a cardboard box so the packaging is plastic-free, as are all Tony’s products. The two dark chocolate bars are vegan, while the milk chocolate bars are suitable for vegetarians.

  I would probably choose the hazelnut or almond as my favorites, but all were good and it was fun to try new flavors (like nougat) that I wouldn’t have bought otherwise.

  Tony’s Chocolonely – milk chocolate hazelnut

  You can also buy large bars (6.35 oz.) of Tony’s Chocolonely on discount at the Grocery Outlet – I bought a bar of the milk chocolate hazelnut for $2, compared to a normal price of around $6. This is probably my favorite Tony’s Chocolonely bar based on taste alone – it has a really rich creamy texture that’s a bit like gianduja.

  It’s a bit sweet, however, clocking in at almost 50% sugar content and I’d also like to eliminate dairy from my diet as much as possible. So overall this is not a common purchase for me – but it is delicious!

  The dark chocolate bars are better choices from both health (less sugar) ethical (vegan) perspectives. So, the variety “rainbow” pack is a good way to figure out whether you can make the switch to dark chocolate, and you may feel a bit better without the extreme sugar rush : )

  Tony’s Chocolonely, Milk Chocolate Hazelnut – Ingredients

  Sugar, dry whole milk, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, hazelnuts, soy lecithin

  Cacao and sugar are both Fairtrade certified – fully traceable for cacao and using a mass balance system for sugar. Hazelnuts are sourced from Spain and Italy.

  Eliminating milk is one of the key actions that Tony’s could undertake to further improve the company’s impact. Tony’s does acknowledge this in its 2021 annual report, implying that using non-dairy milk may be on the cards. See my post on Endangered Species vegan milk chocolate for example of vegan milk chocolate that has a great texture and taste.

  

  Slavery-free chocolate & Tony’s Chocolonely

  Please check out the GSP post on slavery in the chocolate industry for a quick introduction to the topic and a quick summary of what separates good chocolate from bad chocolate, ethically-speaking.

  A decision by the Slave Free Chocolate blog to remove Tony’s Chocolonely from its list of ethical chocolate companies has sparked a useful conversation on the topic. Here’s a comment on it from Tony’s 2021 annual report:

  In late 2020 Tony’s was removed from the list of ethical chocolate companies published on slavefreechocolate.org’s blog. Not because cases of modern slavery suddenly appeared in our value chain – we’ve never found 1 in our own value chain. But because our liquid chocolate producer, Barry Callebaut, has been accused of slacking on sustainability and human rights abuses in their supply chain The fully traceable cocoa we use to produce chocolate is kept separate from Barry Callebaut’s other beans every step of the way. And working with Barry Callebaut is key to changing the industry from within.

  Here’s a useful summary of the situation from Reuters:

  Rather than condemning Tony’s Chocolonely, we should welcome its decision to try and make change from the inside out. The company deliberately chose to source cocoa directly from the Ivory Coast and Ghana to improve supply chains there and shine a light on where action against forced labour is needed. It could have gone for other less problematic sourcing routes, but made the decision not to ignore the risks in West Africa. As Tony’s Chocolonely says, “we go to where the problems are – so we can solve them”. It stands by its relationship with Barry Callebaut and says it is “triggering them to change.  – Reuters Events.

  I mostly agree with this viewpoint. It’s almost certainly easier to secure an ethical supply of cacao somewhere like Ecuador or Panama, but it’s much more challenging in West Africa which supplies 70% of the world’s chocolate. Tony’s mission is to improve conditions in the Ivory Coast and Ghana by setting a precedent for others to follow.

  Some critics believe we shouldn’t work with Barry Callebaut, one of the biggest cocoa processors in the world. But again, this decision is deliberate. Our mission is to make 100% slave free the norm in chocolate, not just our chocolate but all chocolate worldwide.

  Here’s a video outlining the origins of Tony’s Chocolonely. Also, the Tony’s Fair, 2021 video is worth a watch.

  Tony’s Chocolonely & cacao pricing

  Paul Schoenmakers described the decision of Tony’s Chocolonely to take an additional step beyond sourcing Fairtrade to accelerate farmers’ progress out of poverty.

  We decided then to start paying more and figure out how much more was enough to enable farmers to earn a living income.” He continued, “We worked on that model for a couple of years. With help from Fairtrade and the living income community of practice, I’m very proud that two years ago we were able to jointly publish what is now called a Living Income Reference Price for cocoa. – Fairtrade International.

  

  The price of fair cocoa only makes up a tiny fraction of a bar’s total price, so a bar wouldn’t have to be much more expensive to have fair cocoa in it.

  Ethical rating for Tony’s Chocolonely

  Here’s a summary of how I feel about the social and environmental impact of Tony’s Chocolonely, which I’m rating 4 out of 5 Green Stars: 

  • Tony’s Chocolonely has raised awareness on slavery and child labor in the chocolate industry, particularly in West Africa, and is trying to change the system from within.
  • Tony’s is a certified B-Corporation, with a decent score of 101.
  • Cocoa and sugar are fair trade certified (using a mass balance system for sugar)
  • Tony’s is a carbon-neutral company – all CO₂ is offset through JustDiggit.
  • Tony’s joined GoodShipping program and all shipping (by sea) is fueled by biofuel.
  • Wrappers are made from a mixture of recycled and FSC-certified paper. All packaging is plastic-free and Tony’s aims to go plastic free for entire supply chain soon.
  • Tony’s was voted as the #1 sustainable brand by Dutch folk
  • Room for improvement: Tony’s 2021 report doesn’t discuss pesticide use (pesticides used on cacao can be particularly nasty). Another key sustainability issue, maintaining forest ecosystems by growing cacao under the shade of others trees (e.g., agroforestry crops like avocado or mango) is only beginning to be addressed.
  • Milk is an ingredient in most of Tony’s bars, other than the dark chocolate varieties – it accounts for a large part of the bar’s carbon footprint and impact on animals, of course. This would be a good time for Tony’s to switch to plant-based milks – it’s totally doable, as demonstrated by Endangered Species vegan milk chocolate.

  In my review of Alter Eco truffles, I figured that there’s room for improvement but Alter Eco deserved a lot of credit by introducing compostable wrapping for their truffles. The situation is similar here – some definite room for improvement but Tony’s deserves credit for helping to address slavery and child labor in West Africa.

  

  Summary scores (out of 5) for Tony’s Chocolonely chocolate:

  • 4 gold stars for quality and value
  • 4 green stars for social and environmental impact (4.5 green stars for the vegan dark chocolate varieties).

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating! Until next time, stay safe : )  

  March 10, 2022

  slave free chocolate, slavery in the chocolate industry, Tony’s Chocoloney ethical rating, Tony’s Chocoloney Grocery Outlet, Tony’s Chocoloney ingredients, Tony’s Chocoloney nutrition facts, Tony’s Chocoloney review, Tony’s Chocoloney social and environmental impact, Tony’s Chocoloney supply chain

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• Luke’s Organic chips – sustainability, review

  Luke’s Organic chips are almost always available (and discounted) at the Grocery Outlet – but not always the same varieties. Most varieties are good but I wanted to feature two of the more unusual flavors that I came across recently:

  • White Truffle & Sea Salt
  • Ketchup with Mustard & Pickle

  The White Truffle & Sea Salt chips are not just any old white truffle and sea salt – they’re made with Urbani Italian white truffles and fleur de sel from Guérande, France. I’m pretty wary of truffle-flavored things as often it’s a synthetic truffle flavoring and can be awful, but in this case the truffle is genuine and the chips are really good.

  I think they are often sold at Costco too, where they are pretty popular. I wouldn’t eat them in large quantities since they’re quite strong, but that’s a good thing, right? They also have quite a strong salt kick without adding a ton of sodium (see Nutrition Facts, below), thanks to the potent fleur de sel.

  Ketchup with Mustard & Pickle is the kind of flavor that does well in the UK or Canada. A Canadian friend brought some ketchup chips into work once and they had a polarizing effect. I quite like Luke’s version and found them to be a good accompaniment to a Beyond Burger, taking the place of fries and burger condiments, all at once!

  

  Luke’s organic potato chips – ingredients

  Here are ingredients for the two flavors of Luke’s Organic chips that I’m reviewing here.

  White Truffle & Sea Salt – ingredients

  Luke’s Organic potatoes, Luke’s Organic sustainable oil blend (sunflower, safflower, and/or red palm fruit oil) Urbani white truffle seasoning (organic tapioca maltodextrin, sea salt, organic white truffle).

  Ketchup with Mustard & Pickle – ingredients

  Luke’s Organic potatoes, Luke’s Organic sustainable oil blend (red palm fruit oil and avocado oil) Organic seasoning (organic raw cane sugar, organic tomato powder, sea salt, organic maltodextrin, organic onion powder, organic salad mustard [organic vinegar, organic mustard seed, salt, organic turmeric, organic paprika], organic garlic powder, organic white distilled vinegar, organic ground mustard, organic annatto extract, citric acid, organic spices, natural flavor)

  The ingredients for the ketchup chips look much more complex at first but it’s really just a sprinkling of some organic spices. Nutritionally, the two chips are so similar that I just included Nutrition Facts for the truffle chips in the image below. The ketchup chips only differ by tiny amounts of sugars, iron and potassium.

  

  Ethical rating for Luke’s Organic chips

  Here’s a summary of how I feel about the social and environmental impact of Luke’s Organic chips, which I’m rating 4 out of 5 Green Stars: 

  • All of the products are made with organic ingredients (potatoes, vegetable oil, spices, etc.).
  • The potatoes are grown on Luke’s Organic owned farms in South Dakota and Oregon.
  • Most Luke’s products are vegan – they have some cheese puffs and Cheetos-like snacks too.
  • What concerned me though was that their oil blend contains palm oil. I wrote to them to ask about their source and got a full response: “We source palm fruit oil only from small, organic family farms in Ecuador. It is certified Organic, Non-GMO and Fair Trade. Our supplier works with farmers directly to ensure that no deforestation or habitat destruction results from the growing or harvesting process. There are no orangutans in South America. The region in Ecuador where our Organic Red Palm Oil is grown has numerous small family farms, averaging 10 hectares (about 25 acres), interspersed throughout the regional forests. These subsistence farms were planted many years ago and are now being worked by second and third generation farming families.” Because of the massive problems that irresponsibly farmed palm oil has caused, I avoid products with this ingredient unless I know for sure that it’s responsibly-sourced.
  • Most of Luke’s Organic products come in large bags – especially those at the Grocery Outlet. I used Luke’s Organic as an example (in a GSP post) on how buying products in larger packages saves on material. I had bought a huge 28 oz. bag of Luke’s Organic chips at the Grocery Outlet and calculated that it uses 8-times less packaging compared to buying 28 x 1 oz. bags.
  • Room for improvement: more transparency – they haven’t shared very much information on their company operations from a sustainability standpoint. I believe that Luke’s used to be part of Palm Done Right but are no longer listed on that site.

  

  Summary scores (out of 5) for Luke’s Organic chips

  • 4.5 gold stars for quality and value
  • 4 green stars for social and environmental impact

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating! Until next time, stay safe : )  

  February 2, 2022

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• Brave Robot ice cream – ethical review

  Brave Robot is a unique brand of ice cream in that it’s made using milk proteins that come from a fungus rather than a cow. Confused? Well, don’t be – it’ll all become clear in a moment. Brave Robot is the ice cream maker but the vegan milk protein is produced by another company, Perfect Day. The goal of Berkeley-based Perfect Day has been to replicate dairy by engineering a fungus to produce the proteins that are found in milk (casein and whey proteins, mainly).

  So, Perfect Day are offering a vegan version of milk (basically) that’s much closer to cow’s milk than milk made from oats, almond, coconut, etc. Several companies are starting to use Perfect Day’s milk protein as an ingredient:

  1. Brave Robot vegan ice cream, which I’ll get to in a moment.
  2. Modern Kitchen vegan cream cheese, which is not on supermarket shelves yet.
  3. Smitten ice cream, which has several liquid nitrogen equipped stores around the Bay Area.
  4. Nick’s ice cream, low carb and keto-friendly.
  5. Graeter’s ice cream, made in Ohio, interesting flavors.

  Note that Brave Robot and Modern Kitchen brands are both produced by The Urgent Company, which was created by Prefect Day but now runs as an independent company.

  Anyway… on to the Brave Robot ice creams that I tried.

  Brave Robot ice cream – review

  I bought three different flavors of Brave Robot ice cream from the Grocery Outlet for $1.99 each. Folks were surprised to see the ice cream at these prices – friends of mine (biotech enthusiasts) bought ice cream from Perfect Day when it was first released, at a cost of $60 for three pints. These days, you can buy Brave Robot ice cream for around $6 per pint (or $2 at the Grocery Outlet).

  The flavors that I bought were Blueberry Pie, Vanilla N’ Cookies, and Hazelnut Chocolate Chunk – all of which sounded appealing. I’ll cut to the chase – there was something about the ice cream that didn’t quite work for me. It wasn’t terrible by any means – it’s actually pretty close to rich dairy ice cream – but there’s something about it that I didn’t love. I couldn’t pin down what wasn’t quite right – it seemed to be a subtle issue with both taste and texture. I’m not the only one who thought this – friends who tried it picked up on the same thing.

  Here’s what Ryan Pandya, CEO and co-founder of Perfect Day, said in a Medium article introducing The Urgent Company and Brave Robot:

  Call me a cynic, but I don’t think the next pea-protein-slurry is going to suddenly deliver on the creaminess and delight of real dairy ice cream.

  Well, au contraire, Ryan – I found Ripple Foods’ chocolate ice cream (which is made from pea protein) to have a better texture than Brave Robot’s ice cream, so I’d disagree on this. I would definitely repurchase Ripple ice cream over Brave Robot.

  Having said that, I’d recommend trying Brave Robot ice cream if you are a fan of conventional ice cream and looking to cut down on dairy and/or reduce your footprint. I expect that the formulation will evolve and future versions of Brave Robot will be better. I hope so, as Perfect Day’s vegan milk protein offers some large advantages over dairy, from a sustainability perspective (and animal welfare too, of course). I’ll deal with the ethical evaluation soon – first let’s take a look at the ingredients.

  Brave Robot ice cream – Ingredients and Nutrition Facts

  My favorite of the three ice creams that I tried was Hazelnut Chocolate Chunk, so I’m going to show ingredients and nutritional info for that flavor.

  Brave Robot, Hazelnut Chocolate Chunk – Ingredients:

  Water, sugar, coconut oil, ground hazelnuts, sunflower oil, non-animal whey protein, contains less than 2% of maltodextrin, cocoa processed with alkali, natural flavor, calcium potassium phosphate citrate, salt, disodium phosphate, carob bean gum, mono and diglycerides, sunflower lecithin, cornstarch.

  

  So much saturated fat and sugar! It’s 24% sugar by weight, making it the sweetest vegan ice cream that I’ve come across. As mentioned on previous posts, vegan ice creams do have a key nutritional advantage over most conventional dairy ice creams (e.g., Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs) – no trans fats. Protein content is about the same as conventional dairy ice cream – 5 grams per serving – except that it’s protein that’s made in a fungus by Perfect Day.

  Perfect Day’s whey protein is produced in a genetically engineered fungus that’s grown in a fermentor, using technology similar to that for producing insulin or vegetarian rennet. As they only produce the milk protein, it’s lactose-free.

  Sustainability at Perfect Day and Brave Robot

  Here are a few thoughts before I get to the ethical rating for Brave Robot ice cream. Although Perfect Day and Brave Robot (The Urgent Company) are separate entities, they were founded by the same people and it would make sense for their values to align. After all, Perfect Robot is currently the flagship product for Perfect Day’s vegan milk protein. Perfect Day reports on a life cycle assessment (LCA) that compares the impact of its vegan product to dairy protein. Here are some key findings from the LCA study:

  

  Perfect Day’s numbers align pretty well with the footprints of vegan products that I’ve examined previously, such as Quorn (another fungal product) and Beyond Meat. Then, switching over to Brave Robot, I found that the company is also conducting an LCA for a finished pint of ice cream, with a current number of 0.76 kg CO₂ equivalents per pint.

  Brave Robot also report on packaging for the ice cream: the container is made with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified paperboard and lined with sugarcane-derived, petroleum-free liner.  So far so good, but what I found disappointing was that there’s no reporting on the main ingredients: sugar, coconut oil, ground hazelnuts, sunflower oil and cocoa.

  All of these ingredients come with issues from sustainability, social impact, and/or human rights perspectives. You’re probably aware of some of them from general news coverage and maybe others like neonics (insecticides used on conventional sunflowers) if you’re a GSP reader. It seems strange to not source ingredients in a way that matches the ethics of the Perfect Day ingredient (e.g., organic / regenerative, fair trade). Plus, take a look at this:

  We use sustainably sourced palm oil in two of our flavor inclusions (Buttery Pecan and Raspberry White Truffle); all other flavors are palm oil free. It is RSPO certified, which is the global standard for sustainable palm oil.

  If you’ve read my GSP post on palm oil certifications, you’ll know that there are several levels of RSPO certification, and the weakest of them is indeed very weak. Brave Robot doesn’t state to which RSPO level its palm oil is certified. Generally speaking, RSPO has been disappointment as an enforcer of sustainable palm oil, the POIG is better and Palm Done Right is best. I avoid all palm oil products other than those certified by Palm Done Right, if at all possible.

  It seems incongruous for Brave Robot to be so slapdash about sourcing a key ingredient like palm oil, particularly when the product’s main selling point is sustainability.

  Ethical rating for Brave Robot ice cream

  This hasn’t been a straightforward decision, because there’s a mix of positives and negatives here. Hopefully the negatives can be addressed in the future. I’m rating Brave Robot ice cream 3.5 Green Stars based on the following points:

  • All products are vegan, benefiting animals, habitats and climate.
  • Perfect Day’s whey protein production reduces water use up to 99%, greenhouse gas emissions up to 97% and non-renewable energy use up to 60% compared to conventional dairy-based whey.
  • Brave Robot’s ice cream tubs are made from FSC-certified paperboard with a sugarcane-derived, petroleum-free liner.
  • A pint of Brave Robot ice cream has a modest carbon footprint of 0.76 kg CO₂ equivalents.
  • Palm oil is used in two ice cream flavors (Buttery Pecan and Raspberry White Truffle) with the only information provided that it is RSPO certified. There are at least 4 levels within RSPO certification, ranging from mediocre to very weak – none is adequate, IMO, and Brave Robot doesn’t state which level their palm oil is certified at.
  • No information is provided on sourcing of the other ingredients or the impact off the company beyond the carbon footprint.
  • Room for Improvement: Sunflower oil should be organic to avoid neonics.
  • Room for Improvement: Sugar, coconut, hazelnuts and cacao should be fair trade, or equivalent, and sustainably farmed.

  

  Summary scores (out of 5) for Brave Robot ice cream:

  • 2.5 gold stars for quality and value.
  • 3.5 green stars for social and environmental impact, for the flavors shown above (and a lower rating for the flavors that contain palm oil).

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating! Until next time, stay safe : )  

  October 23, 2021

  Brave Robot and Perfect Day, Brave Robot ethical rating, Brave Robot ingredients, Brave Robot palm oil sourcing, engineered Trichoderma fungi, Modern Kitchen, Perfect Day sustainability, The Urgent Company, vegan whey protein

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• Ripple vegan chocolate ice cream – ethical review

  I bought a pint of Ripple Foods’ vegan chocolate ice cream at the Grocery Outlet recently ($1.99 compared to a normal price of around $5) and have to say that I loved it. I don’t buy a lot of ice cream because it’s a terrible food, nutritionally speaking (more on that later). But if I do buy ice cream then it better at least taste good! Ripple’s vegan chocolate ice cream is surprising on two fronts – the chocolate flavor is delicious and the texture is very close to regular dairy ice cream – perhaps even better.

  I’ve had a half-full (half-empty?) tub of Ripple chocolate ice cream in my freezer for more than two months and just tasted it again now to see how it fares after storage. Many vegan ice creams become icy after opening and storage in the freezer, but the texture of the Ripple product is still creamy. I would definitely recommend this ice cream and would rate it as probably the best vegan ice cream that I’ve had – at least from a store. 

  I’ve tried Brave Robot ice cream, made from vegan milk protein that’s produced by Perfect Day, and found the taste to be a little off – I’ll cover it here soon. There is one vegan “ice cream” that I liked as much as Ripple, and that’s the chocolate chip mousse from So Delicious. The So Delicious mousse has less fat and sugar compared to regular ice cream, and the main ingredients are organic. And that brings me to the ingredients and nutrition for Ripple Foods’ chocolate ice cream…

  Ripple chocolate ice cream – Ingredients & Nutrition Facts

  Ingredients: Water, cane sugar, coconut oil, tapioca syrup solids, pea protein, alkalized cocoa powder, chicory root fiber, contains less than 1% of sea salt, sunflower lecithin, dipotassium phosphate, natural flavors, acacia gum, locust bean gum, guar gum.

  As you can see from the ingredients, above, and the nutrition facts, below, the Ripple ice cream is pretty loaded with sugar and fat. But all is not lost! There’s actually a little less sugar compared to regular ice cream, and the fats in coconut oil (medium chain triglycerides) are considered to be healthier than milk fat. There’s also a little fiber (2 grams, compared to zero in most dairy ice cream) which helps temper the body’s response to sugar a little bit.

  

  Most importantly, the Ripple product contains no trans fats, while most dairy ice creams still contain trans fats. Besides trans fats (one of the worst crimes against humanity of the processed food industry!), dairy is really awful from a human health perspective. I feel a lot better since cutting dairy down during lockdown.

  So really there are so many options to avoid ice cream, but if you must have it then selecting vegan ice cream reduces two of the health risks – trans fats and dairy. The nice thing about Ripple is that it’s satisfying and flavorful enough that I don’t need to eat a huge amount at a time. Although I should admit that one reason that my tub of Ripple lasted so long was that I was out of the country for September! (That’s why there haven’t been any posts here, lately.)

  Ethical rating for Ripple Foods’ ice cream

  I would rate Ripple Foods 4 Green Stars, based on the points below:

  • Ripple Foods products are all vegan, benefiting animals, habitats and climate.
  • Yellow peas (one of Ripple’s key ingredients) fix their own nitrogen, avoiding the need for nitrogen fertilizer.
  • Ripple milk has a carbon footprint about one quarter that of dairy (no data is available for Ripple ice cream but based on data for other ice creams with similar ingredients, it’s definitely significantly lower than dairy).
  • Ripple products have smaller water footprints than dairy; peas are grown in regions where rainwater is plentiful.
  • Ripple Foods is a certified B-Corporation, with a score of 102 (improved by over 10% since 2016).
  • Room for improvement: none of the ingredients are organic, although the product is non-GMO certified.
  • Room for improvement: no information is provided about the sourcing of cacao.

  

  Summary scores (out of 5) for Ripple ice cream:

  • 5 gold stars for quality and value.
  • 4 green stars for social and environmental impact

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating! Until next time, stay safe : )  

  October 13, 2021

  chocolate ripple ice cream, Ripple Foods ethical score, Ripple Foods ice cream, ripple ice cream reviews, Ripple vegan ice cream sustainability, What is Ripple ice cream made of?, What is Ripple ice cream?

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• Lärabar – social and environmental impact

  I tried two kinds of Lärabar that I bought at the Grocery Outlet – I really liked one and the other is growing on me. First off, the ä in Lärabar is decorative – it’s not a Danish or Swedish company, but an American brand that’s now owned by one of the largest food corporations, General Mills. Lärabar founder, Lara Merriken, sold the company to General Mills in 2008 and remains an adviser (she wrote a letter at the time, addressing the sale). I’ll get to the social and environmental impact part later, but I’ll review the products first.

  I don’t eat a lot of Lärabars as I’m not a big fan of dates and I’ve usually found that I’d just rather eat nuts or trail mix. The two bars that I tried for this post (all in the name of science!) are a bit more appealing for two different reasons. The first bar (Hemp Seed Brownie) is appealing mainly because it just tastes a lot better than other Lärabars that I’ve tried and in part because it contains hemp seeds. The second one (Apple Cobbler Protein bar) was attractive from a nutritional perspective more than taste – each bar contains 11 grams of protein (mainly from peas).

  Lärabar – Hemp Seed Brownie

  I love hemp for both health and sustainability reasons so I picked up a box of Lärabar hemp seed brownie bars a little while ago at the Grocery Outlet. The packaging and shape changed (see image below) and now they are marketed as a brownie rather than a bar. They’re especially good if they warm up a little bit in the sun (like in your bag while you’re hiking) because they become gooey and the chocolate flavor intensifies. It’s actually hard to find chocolate energy bars that really taste of chocolate, but these do : )

  Lärabar – Apple Cobbler Protein bar

  The newest products in the Lärabar range are high-protein bars that contain pea protein along with the usual mix of nuts and dates. I found them to be very compact and dense – even more than regular Lärabars – and it felt a bit like eating rations. Not that that’s always a bad thing – I actually like dense, high-energy food, especially for traveling or hiking. I also think that if we are going to buy packaged products then the product should be nutritious enough to justify the packaging.

  Drinking water with these bars makes them more pleasant to eat – fluid intake is actually important for high-protein meals in general.

  Lärabar – ingredients & nutrition

  LÄRABAR Original Fruit & Nut bars are made by a simple process in which fruit, nuts, and spices are ground and mixed together. They are not baked or cooked. We use a handful of ingredients, as close to their natural state as possible. – Larabar

  Here are some of the Lärabar certifications / features:

  • Gluten free
  • Kosher
  • Fair Trade Certified™ cocoa and coffee
  • Vegan
  • Non-GMO (not made with genetically engineered ingredients)

  Hemp Seed Brownie – Ingredients

  Dates, Cashews, Semisweet Chocolate Chips (Unsweetened Chocolate, Cane Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Vanilla Extract), Hemp Seeds, Cocoa Powder*, Sea Salt, Vanilla Extract

  Although the packaging changed, the ingredients haven’t, and each bar/brownie provides 370 mg of the omega-3 fatty acid, ALA, thanks to the hemp.

  Apple Cobbler Protein Bar – Ingredients

  Dates, Almonds, Pea Protein, Apples, Cinnamon, Sea Salt

  These bars are 21% protein – that’s 11 grams of protein per bar.

  

  Lärabar is owned by General Mills

  Lärabar is now owned by General Mills and like some other companies owned by food giants (e.g., Kashi, owned by Kellogg’s) there are some discrepancies between the ethos of the smaller company and the parent. For example, Lärabar make a stance against GMO ingredients, while General Mills (and Kellogg’s too) funded campaigns to defeat labeling of GM food.

  I’ve already reviewed a couple of products that are fairly ethical brands owned by a less-ethical giant parent corporation. For example, Sweet Earth pizzas (now owned by Nestlé) and Back to Nature cookies (now owned by B&G Foods). It’s good (if I’m thinking optimistically) that these multinational giants are attempting to include more ethical brands. The danger is that a smaller brand may become compromised if it switches over to using commodity supply chains of the parent company. So I try to take these factors into account when reviewing a brand that was once an independent company but is now owned by a larger corporation.

  In 1999, General Mills launched a new division of its company called Small Planet Foods, dedicated to natural and organic products. You may have seen the brands in grocery stores: Muir Glen and Cascadian Farm. LÄRABAR will be part of Small Planet Foods, conducting business as usual and continuing to produce and innovate the healthiest foods possible. – General Mills

  Ethical rating for Lärabar

  Lärabar doesn’t seem to have changed much over the years – I actually wrote a review of Lärabar five years ago and rated the company 4 green stars for social and environmental impact. The fact that the company hasn’t changed is both good and bad – it appears to have maintained its standards but it would be nice if it had made some improvements on things like carbon footprint or agriculture.

  

  Overall, I think that Lärabar deserves 3.5 Green Stars for social and environmental impact, based on these factors:

  • Lärabar products are certified vegan (even those that contain chocolate).
  • Cocoa and chocolate chips are certified by Fair Trade USA.
  • Minimal processing of ingredients, which keeps the carbon footprint low, generally. A large part of the carbon footprint of processed food comes from the processing part, rather than the agriculture.
  • The box that that holds the bars is made of recycled cardboard and made with wind energy.
  • However, besides that outer box, Lärabar doesn’t report on carbon footprint or other metrics.
  • I’d be more supportive of Lärabar if they used organic ingredients and were more transparent on ingredient sourcing.
  • Lärabar was a woman-owned business, until sold to General Mills.
  • We would have to look to General Mills for reporting on sustainability – and General Mills has a fairly poor reputation for sustainability.
  • General Mills is, however, trying to improve this situation by starting a regenerative agriculture program, but it’s very small so far:

  In the past year, we accelerated farmer adoption of regenerative agriculture practices on more than 70,000 acres in key regions where we source ingredients – getting us closer to our 1 million acres commitment by 2030 – General Mills 2021 Global Responsibility Report

  Summary scores (out of 5) for Lärabar:

  • 4 gold stars for quality and value (hemp brownie) and 3 gold stars (protein bar)
  • 3.5 green stars for overall social and environmental impact

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating! Until next time, stay safe.

  May 13, 2021

  Apple Cobbler, Chocolate Sea Salt Fudge Brownie, General Mills, Grocery Outlet, Hemp Seed Brownie, Lärabar environmental impact, Lärabar ethical rating, Lärabar ownership, Lärabar protein bars, social and environmental impact

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• Endangered Species Oat Milk Dark Chocolate

  Endangered Species Chocolate (ESC) has brought out a range of vegan “milk” chocolate bars made with oat milk! I picked up a bar at the Grocery Outlet to try out: it’s 55% cacao and called Oat Milk + Dark Chocolate. Normally it has a wrapper with zebra stripes (so it’s known as the zebra bar) but my version had Valentine’s Day branding. This is typical of Grocery Outlet’s approach – selling items at a discount because the packaging is no longer relevant. Who wants chocolate in a pink wrapper in March or April? I do, because it means less food waste!

  I’ve always liked Endangered Species chocolate and often buy their 72% cacao bars (the chimpanzee bar) to use in baking. It’s definitely one of the cheapest chocolate bars from a company with an ethical mission. Their three-ounce bars, including the new oat milk bars, sell for around $3 normally and were on sale for $1.49 at the Grocery Outlet.

  Endangered Species Oat Milk + Dark Chocolate – review

  Like many people, I grew up loving milk chocolate like Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Cadbury’s is now owned by Mondelēz International, which ranks fairly low, ethically speaking. Also, Cadbury’s products in the US are made by Hershey, which ranks even lower, and they totally suck. I’ve also found myself eating less and less dairy, especially since lockdown began.

  In any case, I’m excited that vegan milk chocolate bars are on the market now. I expect that the Endangered Species bars aren’t the first on the market but this is the first one that I’ve tried. To be honest, I didn’t even really think of it as milk chocolate – I looked at the ingredients and imagined chocolate with oats. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I tried it – it really is a substitute for milk chocolate!

  The texture is good – it’s not quite as creamy as the Irish-made Dairy Milk that I grew up with, but it’s not far off. Thankfully, it doesn’t have any of the chalkiness or grittiness that you find in low quality oat milk. Being 55% cacao, it’s less sweet than Dairy Milk and most mainstream conventional milk chocolate bars, which is also a good thing. I would buy it again and look forward to trying out the cherry and raspberry versions when I come across them.

  Endangered Species Oat Milk + Dark Chocolate – Ingredients

  The ingredients are simple:

  Chocolate liquor, cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole grain oats, soy lecithin, vanilla.

  Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, and vanilla are traded in compliance with Fairtrade standards, total 83.7%. I’ll discuss the ingredients in the ethical review, coming up next!

  Here’s the nutrition info and certification logos:

  

  Ethical rating for Endangered Species Oat Milk + Dark Chocolate

  I actually wrote a green Stars review of Endangered Species chocolate bars back in 2015, before the Green Stars Project site existed. I did some research this week to update this and contacted ESC for clarification on a few things. Some things have changed for the company but the ethos is similar and I’m maintaining the same rating of 5/5 Green Stars for social and environmental impact. Here’s a summary of reasons for this ethical rating:

  • It’s a vegan product, with oat milk substituting for cow’s milk.
  • 84% of the ingredients are certified by Fairtrade America: Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, and vanilla.
  • Endangered Species Chocolate purchases Green-e certified renewable energy to match 100% of its operations.
  • 10% of ESC profits are donated to non-profits that work towards conservation and protection of endangered species. Recent donations have been made to The National Forest Foundation and The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International.
  • Over $2.6 million has been donated to non-profits by ESC since 2016 and the company hopes to reach annual donations of $1 million soon. Annual revenue for ESC in 2018 was $38 million, so there are no major red flags there. (An unscrupulous company might cook the books so that booked profits are tiny relative to revenue.)
  • ESC’s approach is to commit to long-term partnerships with farmers in Côte d’Ivoire. A lot of the world’s chocolate is produced in West Africa, and Côte d’Ivoire in particular has many issues from child labor and forced labor to deforestation and some particularly nasty pesticides. So it’s good that some are trying to support sustainable agriculture and a better standard of living there.
  • On that note, ESC could do better at reporting on some farming sustainability metrics.

  

  Endangered Species versus Alter Eco

  I reviewed Alter Eco chocolate truffles back in December and it was the first product to score 5/5 Green Stars, so I thought it would be good to briefly compare the two chocolate makers. Both Alter Eco and Endangered Species Chocolate have offset their carbon footprints and source fair trade certified ingredients. Alter Eco is blazing a trail with its Alter Eco Foundation, which is working towards sustainable agroforestry, while Endangered Species Chocolate is blazing a different kind of trail with charitable donations to conservation funds and attempting to improve conditions in Côte d’Ivoire.

  We do work with small farmer organizations versus mass growers which is great for a lot of reasons, especially the prevention of deforestation which is the number one environmental problem caused by cocoa farming in West Africa.

  Whitney Bembenick, Director of Marketing & Innovation at ESC

  So the two companies are both good for some overlapping reasons and some reasons that are unique to each company.

  ESC may be lagging Alter Eco a little on sustainable agriculture (or at least reporting on it) but scores extra points for supporting conservation programs, working towards better conditions in Côte d’Ivoire, and for developing good vegan milk chocolate. While there’s some room for improvement in both companies, I think they are both in the top 10% in terms of social and environmental impact and therefore both deserve 5/5 Green Stars.

  Summary scores (out of 5) for Endangered Species Oat Milk + Dark Chocolate:

  • 4.5 gold stars for quality and value
  • 5 green stars for social and environmental impact

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating! Until next time, stay safe : )  

  April 9, 2021

  Endangered Species Chocolate, Endangered Species Chocolate impact, ethical review, Grocery Outlet, Oat Milk + Dark Chocolate, oat milk chocolate, social and environmental impact, Vegan milk chocolate, zebra bar

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• So Delicious vegan ice creams – ethical review

  I was So Impressed with the So Delicious chocolate chip mousse that I bought at the Grocery Outlet that I picked up two varieties of ice cream on my next visit. Here’s what I purchased:

  1. So Delicious Peanut Butter and Raspberry ice cream (made with oat milk)

  2. So Delicious Coconut Macaroon ice cream (made with cashew milk)

  Like the chocolate chip mousse that I wrote about last time, I really liked raspberry ripple ice cream growing up. So I liked the raspberry aspect of the Peanut Butter and Raspberry ice cream was really good for me. The peanut butter was a bit heavy, so I had to eat this ice cream in fairly small doses – but that’s actually a good thing ; ). The two flavors did work well together, though and it was only after eating it that I got the message that it was basically PB&J!

  The Coconut Macaroon was basically as-advertised. The best thing about it was the little pieces of actual coconut macaroon mixed into it – giving it some texture and variety. It would be a nice alternative to vanilla for serving with pie.

  So Delicious Peanut Butter and Raspberry ice cream – ingredients

  Oatmilk (Filtered Water, Whole Oat Flour), Organic Cane Sugar, Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Tapioca Syrup, Peanuts, Peanut Oil, Black Raspberries, Sugar, Pea Protein, Rice Starch, Natural Flavor, Salt, Black Currant Juice Concentrate, Guar Gum, Locust Bean Gum, Citric Acid.

  So Delicious Coconut Macaroon ice cream – ingredients

  Organic Coconutmilk (Filtered Water, Organic Coconut), Organic Cane Sugar, Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Tapioca Syrup, Cane Sugar, Organic Rice Starch, Organic Coconut, Palm Oil, Filtered Water, Pea Protein, Organic Sunflower Oil, Guar Gum, Locust Bean Gum, Sea Salt, Natural Flavor.

  

  As mentioned in the post on So Delicious mousse, I was surprised that conventional ice cream (e.g., Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs) still contain trans fats (1 gram per serving for vanilla ice cream from both brands). Trans fats, as you probably know, have been strongly linked to heart disease as well as cancer and diabetes. These So Delicious ice creams contain quite a bit more sugar and fat than their mousse and other light desserts, but are still an improvement over dairy ice cream in that they contain some fiber, less total fat, zero cholesterol, and zero trans fat.

  Ethical rating for So Delicious ice creams

  Here’s a summary of how I feel about the social and environmental impact of So Delicious ice cream, which I’m scoring 4/5 Green Stars: 

  • These ice creams are vegan, as are all So Delicious products.
  • The top ingredients for both products (except for the oats) are certified organic.
  • The So Delicious website provides a decent amount of info about packaging, including their use of plant-based plastic (from sugarcane) and post-consumer recycled or FSC-certified paperboard for some products. The ice cream pint containers are non-compostable (because of a thin plastic lining) and also non-recyclable in most places.
  • So Delicious is part of Whitewave Foods, which is now owned by the French multinational food company, Danone Group. Danone Group, like many multinationals, is a mix of good and bad. The negatives are similar to those of Nestlé – bottled water and pushing infant formula in developing countries. But, overall, Danone looks better than Nestlé to me.
  • Danone North America is a certified B-corporation, just about qualifying with a modest score of 84.9.
  • Neither So Delicious nor Danone North America report on ingredient sourcing or corporate sustainability.
  • The coconut macaroon flavor does contain a very small amount of palm oil, but the PB & Raspberry flavor doesn’t and, in general, So Delicious products don’t contain palm oil. The WWF gives Danone a pretty good score on its palm oil scorecard.

  Summary scores (out of 5) for So Delicious Chocolate Chip Mousse:

  • 4.5 gold stars for quality and value.
  • 4 green stars for social and environmental impact

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating! Until next time, stay safe : )  

  February 11, 2021

  Grocery Outlet, So Delicious Coconut Macaroon, So Delicious ethical rating, So Delicious ethical review, So Delicious Peanut Butter and Raspberry, So Delicious social and environmental impact, So Delicious sustainability, So Delicious vegan ice cream

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• Hemp Yeah! Hemp seed bars review

  One of the newish brands that I discovered at the Grocery Outlet is Canada-based Hemp Yeah! (aka, Manitoba Harvest). I’ve bought Hemp Yeah! bars and hemp milk at the Grocery Outlet and have liked all of the products I’ve tried so far – I’ll cover the hemp milk in another review. The hemp bars that I’m currently eating are Dark Chocolate Almond Sea Salt but I’ve also tried the Coconut Cashew Dark Chocolate variety.

  I like that hemp seeds are the first ingredient (followed by sunflower seeds, dark chocolate, and pea protein crisps) and that they are therefore rich in the minerals and omega-3 fats that we love hemp for. Each 45 g bar provides 6 g of omega-3 & 6 fatty acids, 10 g of protein, 3 g of fiber, and fairly high percentages of our recommended intake of several minerals (Mg, Mn, Zn, Fe) and B-vitamins. There’s only 7 grams of sugars per bar, which is pretty impressive considering how tasty they are – the chocolate coating is really good; often not the case for energy bars.

  They weren’t as ridiculously cheap as some items at the Grocery Outlet – it cost $12 for a box of 12 bars, compared to a normal price of between $20 and $27 – but I think they’re worth it.

  Hemp Yeah! Dark Chocolate Almond Sea Salt bars – ingredients

  Shelled hemp seeds, sunflower seeds, fair trade dark chocolate (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, sunflower lecithin, vanilla extract), pea protein crisps (pea protein, tapioca starch), tapioca syrup, agave syrup, toasted coconut, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sea salt, coconut oil, cocoa powder, almond extract, natural flavor.

  

  Ethical rating for Hemp Yeah! bars

  In the context of clothing, I’ve looked at sustainability of hemp over on the Green Stars Project, concluding that it’s one of the most sustainable textiles that you can buy. Agricultural inputs for growing hemp are generally low, and the same can be said for sunflower seeds, another high-yield crop. Chocolate, the third ingredient is fair trade certified. Here’s a summary of how I feel about the social and environmental impact of Hemp Yeah! Hemp seed bars, which I’m scoring 4.5 Green Stars:

  • Hemp seed, the main ingredient, is a sustainable crop that we should be using more of, for food, clothing, and other needs. Hemp crops often require little or no use of pesticide or herbicide, can be grown on marginal land, and actually add carbon to the soil, leaving the land in better condition.
  • Sunflower seeds are another high-yield, low-input crop, but are often treated with neonics (pesticides that harm bees) so I’d prefer if these bars were made with organic sunflower seeds.
  • Chocolate, the third ingredient, is fair trade certified.
  • Pea protein, the fourth ingredient, is generally one of the most sustainable high-protein crops, especially when grown in rain-rich Canada.
  • The company (Manitoba Harvest) is a certified B-corporation, with a decent score of 92.5.
  • One of Manitoba Harvest’s co-founders, Martin Moravcik, advocated for the legalization of industrial hemp, which became reality in 1998, the same year that the company was founded. This is a fairly big deal, as the prohibition of hemp was a major misstep by governments.
  • Manitoba Harvest is certified carbon neutral.
  • The bars are vegan, as are most of the products made by Manitoba Harvest (except for a couple that contain honey).

  Summary scores (out of 5) for Hemp Yeah! Dark Chocolate Almond Sea Salt bars:

  • 4.5 gold stars for quality and value.
  • 4.5 green stars for social and environmental impact

  If you have a different opinion, please share your rating! Until next time, stay safe : )  

  January 28, 2021

  Canadian hemp seeds, Dark Chocolate Almond Sea Salt, ethical rating for Hemp Yeah, hemp foods, hemp seeds environmental impact, Hemp Yeah bars ingredients, Hemp Yeah seed bars, Hemp Yeah sustainability, Manitoba Harvest, sustainable hemp food

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