Veganism is an increasingly popular lifestyle dietary choice, with more and more foods becoming certified as being a trustworthy choice to purchase; essentially giving a stamp of approval to the end consumer that certain standards are upheld during the growing and processing of this delicious plant based food product.
For those of you that aren’t too sure what being Vegan means; The Vegan Society defines it as ‘a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose’. This means that vegan chocolate musn’t contain any dairy products, or be sourced from anywhere that exploits animals in any way. Our dark chocolate fits this bill perfectly; and as it can be difficult to know for sure when you are choosing what to buy, we felt we needed to certify our dark chocolate range with the Vegan Society to help make it an easier choice.
According to the Vegan Society, over 600,000 people in the UK alone now identify as Vegan; which is also the most sustainable diet. It is said that 4 out of 5 people are unaware that animal agriculture is actually a key factor in climate change – but we are hoping that this blog will in fact help to change that! There are many reasons as to why people choose to go Vegan; and there are plenty of statistics on The Vegan Society website that may be contributing factors. However, many people also follow a vegan diet due to being unable to consume dairy products; and that was one of the key reasons as to why Choc affair started in the first place.
Born of the necessity of a dietary requirement, Linda (Choc affair founder) started her love of making chocolate at home, where she wanted to create a sweet treat for her two young daughters who were lactose intolerant. And so, she created a dark hot chocolate stirrer that could be swirled into rice milk (or other non-dairy alternative), so that her girls could enjoy a hot chocolate without having to worry about the effects of milk.
Over the years, our range has grown to include a lovely range of flavour infused dark chocolates, with a recent change being increasing the cocoa solids to the more popular 60% in response to consumer demands. This naturally led us to the decision of seeking the Vegan Society approval of our range, helping to create instant visual clarity for those seeking a dairy free chocolate.
Our Dark chocolate range includes flavour infused bars, single origin bars, chocolate buttons and hot chocolate; each one giving you your chocolate fix in a different way, and each also now vegan certified.
We hope you love our dark chocolate treats as much as we do – and we would love to hear your thoughts and ideas for any new recipes.
The Choc affair team x