You’ve heard that chocolate is good for you, but those claims leave out two key points:

 
If you want to try a healthier chocolate, check out Gnosis Chocolate (gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge).

Gnosis celebrates “the origins of cacao, the well-being of our society, and Earth’s natural majesty.” This specialty line:

Healthier chocolate for Halloween. Photo courtesy Gnosis Chocolate.

The bars are available plain or flavored with popular herbs and spices (chili, coconut-almond, hazelnut, mint, sea salt) as well as nutrient-dense superfoods (cashew-fig, cinnamon-goji, pomegranate-açaí).

Some bars have holistic and ayurvedic ingredients rarely found in chocolate: camomile essential oil, chaste berry, dong quai, evening primrose oil, goldenberry, Inca berry, hemp seed, mulberry, yumberry, schizandra berry, shatvari, Sunwarrior Protein Powder (vegan) and valerian.

In addition to chocolate bars, Gnossis makes truffles, hot chocolate and trail mix.

The products are certified kosher, organic and vegan and are free of soy, gluten, and dairy. The bars are wrapped in PCW* recycled, biodegradable packaging printed with vegetable inks.

Gnosis was founded by Vanessa Barg, a board certified holistic health counselor, who began making chocolate in 2006 as gifts for her clients. In her search for raw, unadulterated cacao, she studied the beans, working on cacao farms and processing beans from the pod. She personally visits the sources and works with growers to assure bean quality and working conditions and to support the growth of organic farming.

Learn more and shop online at GnosisChocolate.com.

*Post consumer waste.

If there’s one thing that will never make our “meh” list, it’s chocolate truffles, especially the ones so lovingly crafted at Godiva. Now, their renowned truffle-making artistry has leapt to new, irresistible heights.

At Godiva, “How can we make truffles even better?” is a mantra. How indeed?

Start with Ace of Cakes pastry czar, Duff Goldman and Godiva Executive Chef and chocolatier, Thierry Muret in the kitchen, whisk their ideas together until rich and creamy. Out comes Godiva’s first-ever special confection, The Cake Truffle Collection.

These inventions are pure genius: cake truffles without a trace of cake. That’s right. No cake.

New Cake Truffles. Photo courtesy Godiva.

The Ace of Cakes, Duff Goldman, culled his ultimate cake recipes and teamed them up with Godiva’s old-world chocolate-making techniques to create four specific cake “favorites,” using subtly flavored mousse, ganache, cream cheese and a variety of chocolates to reproduce the cake flavors.

The four cake truffles include:

 
The truffle treats are sold either individually or in collections of eight or twenty four pieces that include a vibrant, colorful keepsake box. The collection makes an ideal hostess gift or unexpected birthday surprise, wedding remembrance or anniversary delight. For more information about the Cake Truffle Collection and other Godiva products, visit Godiva.com.

The collection is certified kosher (dairy) by OU.

—Rowannn Gilman
 

Find more of our favorite chocolates.

At the beginning of the year, Nabisco launched BelVita breakfast biscuits, a nutritious alternative to cereal and bread products. They’re whole grain, calorie-friendly, and have been designed to release sustained energy.

We highly recommended them. We didn’t foresee then that these nutritious, slightly sweet, crunchy and flavorful biscuits would become our favorite grab-and-go breakfast and snack. (We also enjoy them as a sit-and-relax breakfast and snack.)

So we’ve promoted BelVita to Top Pick Of The Week. Read the full review and see of BelVita, which means beautiful life, can become part of yours.

The line is certified kosher by OU.

Find more of our favorite:

Grab a packet of BelVita biscuits for breakfast. Photo courtesy Nabisco.

It’s always exciting to discover a new “favorite food” that’s good for you. When we received a generous shipment of Garden Lites frozen vegetable soufflés from the manufacturer, we liked them.

But as we ate soufflé after veggie soufflé, we grew to really like them. We became so accustomed to eating one a day as a snack or as part of a light lunch, that we laid in a new supply when the original shipment was exhausted.

While we relish the vegetable soufflés as casual fare, we wouldn’t hesitate to serve them as a first course at a fancy dinner. Assuming, of course, that we’d be willing to share our stash.

The soufflés are made in nine varieties: broccoli, butternut squash, carrot, cauliflower, pizza (cauliflower topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella), roasted vegetable (mixed veggies), southwestern (mixed veggies with southwestern seasonings), spinach and zucchini.

There are also two julienned vegetable dishes that satisfy: zucchini marinara and zucchini portabella.

Our new favorite snack, first course or light lunch. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

Each single serve is equivalent to two portions of vegetables. Look in your grocer’s freezer case and bring them home: You’re in for a treat!

The line is certified kosher.
 
Read the full review.

Find more of our favorite vegetable products and recipes.

Fruit drinks, doubly spiced. Photo courtesy
Prometheus Springs.

Prometheus Springs is an exciting new line of juice drinks. You might call it the hottest line around, thanks to delectable blends of fruit juice, hot spices and capsaicin, the component that gives the heat to hot chiles. As a bonus, it’s certified organic and kosher.

There’s a big market of people who love spicy foods. They’ll love these terrific, refreshing, spicy drinks, which make great cocktail mixers as well.

We love every one of the six flavors:

 
In addition to the spices in each fruit, capsaicin—the heat component of hot chiles—is added for double sizzle.

But the drinks are “mainstream hot.” We prefer mild salsa, for example, and found the heat levels to be just fine.

Check out the full review, and perhaps send some Prometheus Springs to a spicy-hot loving friend.

Or, use them to add sizzle to your Labor Day bash.
 
Find more of our favorite beverages: reviews and recipes.

New York Style is known for its bagel chips, available in seven flavors.

The company has recently launched mini bagel chips, in BBQ, Cheddar, Garlic and Sea Salt.

For us, the standout is Garlic: a buttery, garlicky chip that’s delicious:

The line is certified kosher by OU.

Find the store nearest you with the company’s store locator.
 
Find more of our favorite crackers and snacks.

Mini bagel chips in four flavors: We like Garlic the best. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

We’ve been enjoying more than a few ice cream cones this month, National Ice Cream Month.

But what if you have gluten sensitivities. Where’s your cone?

Goldbaum’s, a natural food company based in Brooklyn, New York, is at the ready with two different cones that crunch as nicely as the “real thing.”

In the shape of waffle/cake cones, their texture is more like the lighter style wafer/cake cones (here’s the difference between the two types).

So what’s in a gluten-free cone? Instead of wheat, there’s a mix of potato starch and tapioca starch, plus other ingredients including sugar, salt and vanilla.

The gluten-free cones don’t have the flavor of wheat-based cones, but when ice cream is added, you won’t notice the difference—you’ll just enjoy the crunch.

The regular Goldbaum’s cones have just 11 calories apiece, so they’re a boon for calorie counters as well. The sugar cones have 41 calories, are an inch or so taller, and weigh in at 41 calories. Conventional ice cream cones have up to 20% more calories.

The line is certified kosher by OU. Find out more at Goldbaums.com.

Gluten-free fun. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

Ice cream was invented many centuries before the ice cream cone. Check out the history of ice cream cones.

We prefer iced tea with no sweetener, or a just a touch, such as the bottled teas crafted by Honest Tea and Inko’s White Tea.

So we are not a prospect for Sweet Leaf Tea, a brand we’ve tasted on numerous occasions. In organic and all-natural, original and flavored variations (lemon-lime, mint & honey, peach, raspberry, etc.), it is Southern-style sweet tea. Made with excellent tea, it’s a hit with many, but too sweet for us.

So we were excited when the brand introduced two flavors of Diet Sweet Leaf Tea, The Original and Citrus.

They’re absolutely delicious, and some kind of magic incantation must have been cast over the sucralose to make the drinks taste so natural.

Diet “The Original” Sweet Leaf Black Tea

If you doubt our word that a zero-calorie sweet tea can taste as good as this, company owners Clayton Christopher and David Smith recount the true story of how they ran out of Original Sweet Tea at an Austin City Limits Music Festival. They served Diet The Original for a few hours and no one noticed.

Sweet Leaf’s two diet tea flavors. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

Diet “Citrus” Sweet Leaf Green Tea

As with The Original, Diet Citrus is made with filtered water, plus organic green tea, natural flavors, citric acid and ascorbic acid (vitamin C).

While Diet The Original has very fine tea flavor, Diet Citrus has layers and layers of flavor: not just citrus but peach and pineapple, as well.

We’ll be ordering them in bulk. Fortunately, both flavors are made in 64-ounce plastic jugs along with 16 ounce glass single-serves. Buy them by the jugful.

The line is certified kosher by OU.

Here’s a store locator. You can also buy Sweet Leaf on Amazon.com.

Find more of our favorite iced tea brands, plus recipes.

People who are diagnosed with a food allergy have to give up some favorite foods or turn to less-than-tasty substitutes. But enough Americans are diagnosed with allergies that businesses are rising to the occasion to make good-tasting alternatives.

Often, allergen-free products are made because a family member develops the condition. In one of the more ironic situations, the Coffins, a Montana farm family that has been dairying for generations, had to remove all dairy products from the diets of mom and the kids.

After trying the less-than-satisfactory alternatives the family began to create their own substitutes, tasty enough that everyone—including the non-allergic—could enjoy. The WayFare line of puddings, cheese spreads (regular, Mexican and smoked, our favorite) and sour cream was the happy result. Ice cream is currently under development.

The “secret” ingredient in the line is certified gluten-free, whole grain oatmeal. In the course of using oatmeal to replace the body of milk, the products also became cholesterol free and vegan.

The line is 100% dairy-free, soy free, cholesterol free, trans-fats free and non-GMO. The products are certified kosher by Star-K.

WayFare lactose-free puddings. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

So how do they taste?

The butterscotch and chocolate fare well; the vanilla, to us, doesn’t have significant vanilla flavor and works better as a hard sauce or creamy topping.

There’s a store locator on WayFareFoods.com, and information for retailers who want to amp up their lactose free foods.

FOOD ALLERGY FACTS

There’s an economic opportunity in products that address food allergies. Anheuser-Busch makes a gluten-free beer, the Girl Scouts sell three varieties of milk-free (lactose-free) cookies and General Mills reformulated Rice Chex earlier this year to be gluten-free. Kellogg’s makes its Pop-Tarts in nut-free factories. If vodka is your drink of choice, look for products distilled from non-grains, such as grapes and potatoes.

An estimated 12 million people in the U.S. have food allergies; 2 million more have celiac disease, a potentially deadly form of gluten allergy.

Medical experts don’t know why the number of people with food allergies is increasing. Theories include reduced contact with germs, exposure to certain environmental pollutants and, in the case of peanut allergies, the way peanuts are processed and at what point they are introduced into a person’s diet. Much research is needed; there is very little of it, even though allergic reaction to food causes about 30,000 emergency room visits and 150 to 200 fatalities each year.

Statistics from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) reveal that in the U.S.:

 
So read the labels, and look for more good food coming from allergen-free manufacturers.

Cool off with minimal calories. Photo
courtesy Sparkling Ice.

With record heat in many parts of the country, including ours, our thoughts ran to the different ways to cool off—without packing on the calories.

So we kept making bottles of seltzer with our Soda Stream, and mixed lots of our favorite new 5-calorie Lipton Tea and Honey To Go Stix Iced Tea Mix (in the Blackberry Pomegranate flavor) into individual bottles of cold water.

Then, we made our first diet ice pops of the season. All you need is ice pop molds and your favorite flavor of diet soda (we prefer fruit and root beer).

This tasty recipe uses calorie-free Black Raspberry Sparkling ICE with fresh raspberries. If you’re not counting calories, you can also use regular soda, juice or kefir.

The chopped fruit helps to bulk up the thinness of the soda.

RASPBERRY ICE POPS

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. In a bowl, stir together soda and chopped raspberries.

2. Ladle mixture into ice pop molds and insert handles.

3. Freeze for at least 2 hours or until frozen.
 
The other Sparking ICE flavors can be adapted to pops as well: Coconut Pineapple, Kiwi Strawberry, Lemonade, Lemon Lime, Orange Mango, Pink Grapefruit and Pomegranate Berry. The line is certified kosher by OU.

The over-21 crowd can add a half teaspoon of gin, tequila or vodka per pop. Don’t add more without testing, or your pops may not freeze.