Another Great Product Bites The Dust

In the last couple of years there have been several companies whose products our family used regularly who changed their product formulations rendering their products no longer acceptable to us. A few of the most notable ones were Desert Essence Organics who changed their formulas and their conditioners no longer left our hair comb-able, Organic Planet once had a 100% whole grain udon noodle but now it is a blend of whole and non-whole wheat, MyChelle revamped their entire line leaving me high and dry for many of my daily facial products including sunblock, and quite painfully Cascadian Farms changed their children's cereals bumping the sugar content in their Clifford Crunch from 5 grams per serving to 8 grams per serving, shame on you Cascadian Farms.

Today I received a very sad e-mail from Sunspire informing me that they had indeed changed the formula of their Grain Sweetened Chocolate Chips. This is perhaps one of the largest losses to the natural and health foods industry. Anyone who is trying to eat a "whole foods" diet was familiar, I am sure, with the Sunspire Grain Sweetened Chocolate Chips as they counted as a whole food and allowed whole foodies a sweet treat without eating refined sugars. They were sweetened with whole grain corn and barley malt, basically like diastatic malt. The grains were sprouted, then the entire grain along with the sprout were dried and ground and used to sweeten the chocolate (with normal malt only the sprout is dried and ground and used as a sweetener). Sunspire has now switched to a brown rice syrup to sweeten their Grain Sweetened Chocolate Chips leaving a huge void in the sweets category for whole foodists and anyone trying to eat as little refined sugars as possible. Shame on you Sunspire, or maybe this was a decision made by Hain-Celestial. In any case, I am not sure if contacting the company to complain would help, but here is SUNSPIRE'S CONTACT FORM. If anyone knows of a chocolate that fills this void, please let me know!