Absolutely. Everything we offer has been specifically developed and made in-house by Maine Cottage Foods using only truly low glycemic ingredients. These specially selected ingredients promote lower and slower blood glucose levels even though they taste sweet. This is very important for diabetics since they have problems with insulin production or resistance that are worsened by spikes in blood glucose levels. My mother is a diabetic and I know she is totally safe eating our "sweets". Are the sweeteners really that big a deal, as long as they aren't sugar? Yes! For the weight-conscious, higher glycemic sweeteners will raise insulin levels and lead to fat storage, sabotaging your goals. For diabetics, high glycemic sweeteners may cause dangerously high blood glucose levels. A look at the glycemic index of sweeteners shows clearly which sweeteners are best. Some sweeteners, like the commonly used maltitol, are actually not that different from sugar, being even higher glycemic than fruit sugars! We use erythritol as our favored sweetener since, in comparison to maltitol-based chocolate, studies have shown that chocolate sweetened with erythritol has a much lower glycemic response, causes less gastric upset and is lower calorie. The lower a sweetener is on the glycemic index, the less it increases blood glucose levels. A glycemic value of zero represents a sweetener that has “no effect” on blood sugar levels. All values are averages, but serve to rank order the various sweeteners. Glucose - 100 Corn syrup - 85-92 Sucrose (Table sugar) - 65 Honey - 50 Lactose (Milk sugar) - 46 Polyglycitol / hydrogenated starch hydrolysate - 39 Maltitol - 36. (used in most "low carb" sweets) Fructose (Fruit sugar) - 23 Erythritol - 0 (used by Maine Cottage Foods) After eating your chocolate I feel full. I can't eat as much as I could regular chocolate. Why? The short answer: Our chocolate and baked goods are filling because we designed them to be. They are packed with good, natural fiber, probiotic fiber, protein and natural fats. These make you feel full, while the true lack of carbs/sugar (which fosters binging) completes the effect. Background and Business Model: It may seem strange for a company to design food to be eaten less of. However, it arises from our specific business model. We want you to lose weight and stay there, to avoid becoming diabetic if you are pre-diabetic, or to be able to eat sweets that won't increase blood sugar if you already are diabetic. We envision our sweets enhancing your life and providing good value, not over-running it because "you *have* to eat our sweets exclusively or else" (hear the scary music?). Our sweets are meant to play a special role in your life - to be a source of delight or as a reward, to be your safety net, the ones you can trust at home without fearing a binge or can use to short-circuit a binge brought on by other foods (my weakness is Doritos, the old salt-sweet cycle). Our uncommon business model depends on your making progress and achieving success. This model is in stark contrast to the general cheap-stuff-cheap model that depends on mass eating. We know there are a million people out there who can be helped, and deserve, gourmet, truly low carb sweets. We count on your sharing your good news about our products so then we may gain new customer-friends. Serving even a small percentage of those million people is enough for us. Our foods are specialized and are not for everybody. Again, we are not a mass-eating model. If we could develop the perfect single candy bar that would guarantee you a safe 10-pound loss or cure your diabetes we would do it in a heartbeat. Then we would be very happy to serve your million friends one candy bar each. Not because we are nice people (though we are), but because that is simply how we plan to be successful in this business. In the meantime, until we achieve that perfect product, we strive to get as close to that goal as possible. Our business model and everything we work towards is predicated upon your success, not on your eating tons of our products. So, in a big nutshell, that's why our foods are not binge-inducing and why we keep ahead of the curve. Your success demands nothing less. Do you have any low carb treats that are made without wheat? Yes, everything we offer is gluten free and low carb. All our chocolate is gluten free and all our baked goods are made using a proprietary, gluten-free almond blend instead of wheat flour. I melted some of your sugar free chocolate to make into a gift shape, but it didn't taste as good as the original. Did I do something wrong? When chocolate is melted and then reformed, it loses its original crystal structure and forms a new one that can be quite different and is often not as good as the original structure. This crystal structure is responsible for a lot of things, but one thing it effects is how it will feel in your mouth - your chocolate experience. We get around this problem, and maintain our product quality, by using a tempering machine every time we melt chocolate. The machine is really cool, actually. As the chocolate melts, you feed in a little piece of the original chocolate and this "teaches" the new melted chocolate what structure it should acquire. So, the next time you want a special shape, just ask us. Most of the cost of our products is from the ingredients themselves, so we offer custom-made chocolates at a very reasonable price. How long before I can expect my order? Our goal is to make and send each order out within 48 hours of receiving it. Usually we can make your treats the same day we get the order and send it the same day or the next day, but sometimes we get orders in clumps, equipment breaks or special ingredients don't reach us as scheduled and these things will slow us down. You can track your order's status using a code sent in our confirmation email to you. Also, if we cannot make and ship your order within 4 days, we will email you so that you know we have not forgotten you and to apprise you of the situation. Are your foods low GL? The short answer is "yes". We haven't done a clinical study of volunteers eating our food, but the math supports it, since food, unlike people, pretty much is just the sum of its parts. And we only use excellent parts. All our foods are made with very low GI (glycemic index) ingredients. To get the GL (glycemic load) of any food, you multiply the amount of useable carbs in a real-life serving by it's GI and then divide this number by 100. If the number is 10 or lower, then it is considered a low GL food. By this criteria, our food would be very low GL, even if you ate more than the average person. Our chocolate is pretty rich, so most people eat just a little and are happy with that. But, even if you did manage to eat a lot, there is a lot of fiber and fat to slow down increases in blood sugar, which in turn decreases GL. In addition, our special baking blend is made from ground almonds, which has a GI and GL of zero. |