Eat Chocolate, Save The Animals By Joan Young on Mar 15, 2009 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

Endangered Species chocolate not only tastes great but you can feel good about eating it since the cacao is ethically grown and 10% of the profits are donated to ecological causes.

We had company this weekend and went out to eat, a rare treat for us these days. Then we stopped in an organic foods store to find some chocolate for dessert. They had a lot of choices, but as it turned out, we each selected a different flavor of bar by Endangered Species.

I chose the bar with the red-eyed tree frog on it. It is dark chocolate (70% cacao), with cacao nibs, yacon and acai. Each bar is 3 ounces divided into 12 squares so you can be good and just break off a piece if you want to. My bar is marked as containing 2 servings of 230 calories each.

I needed to choose a bar without nuts (until my teeth are fixed), and this one only had small chips of the cacao nibs so I didn't have any trouble eating it. One thing that I noticed right away is that for dark chocolate it melted in my mouth nicely. I don't know how to describe the flavors of the yacon and acai except to say that they were not overwhelming. They gave the chocolate a little zing, but did not have particularly distinctive flavors of their own.

Inside the labels of bars made by Endangered Species there is information about the animal shown on the wrapper, and information about the flavors in the bar. Yacon is supposed to have a flavor reminiscent of apple with potassium and antioxidants. Acai has antioxidants and amino acids, Omega 6 & 9, fiber, calcium and vitamins. The cacao nibs give a slight crunch to the bar and boost the antioxidants of the dark chocolate.

The cocoa in these bars is 100% ethically traded. It is purchased only from small family farms. 10% of the profits goes to help support species, preserve habitat and aid humanity. You can learn more about this at ChocolateBar.com/GiveBack

The wrapper is made of recycled paper. The outer wrapper could be recycled again, but the inner wrapper is bonded foil paper so that has to be thrown out (at least I can't send this kind of paper to the recycler).

The bars come in several other flavors. Most are dark, but there are a couple of milk chocolate choices.

It was a pricey treat but it was a special day and I like to support that store when I can bear the prices. Products can be purchased directly from the web site ChocolateBar.com