Skip this Brand for Hot Cocoa Day

December 13th will be Hot Cocoa Day and you have a lot of brands to choose from. We've covered dozens of them here on The Chocolate Cult. Today we are covering a brand that we can't recommend. That's great, because job is not to tell you what to buy or to blindly support companies that send us products to review, but to help you, the reader, spend your money wisely. The following product was sent to us to test out and write about via the Amazon Vine program, this article is a sad bonus for the brand, but it is made with cocoa powder so it deserves attention here. No other form of compensation was received for sharing our experience with this product.

FITNE Instant Choco Mix has 15.33% Cocoa Powder, so it qualifies to be here on The Chocolate Cult, but it has a lot of other added ingredients. These other ingredients include Inulin (a prebiotic), Non-Dairy Creamer, unspecified Milk Product, Maltitol (a sugar alcohol), White Kidney Bean Extract (for the fiber), L-Glutathione (an antioxidant), and Sucralose (an artificial sweetener). That all seems like it could be healthy but I know folks for whom this would trigger several health problems immediately. All of these ingredients plus 120 ml of water (1/2 cup) for a smaller than normal mug of hot cocoa-like beverage. I was worried at first because of the sachets that came in the big bag.

However, each sachet contents dissolved very well in hot water if you kept stirring it. If you let it settle, the powder could become grainy, but that is a problem with almost every hot cocoa mix we have tested here on The Chocoolate Cult so I won't criticize FITNE on this point. However, the flavor was not chocolate. I got a cookie flavor, while another of the three people I served it to said it was like weak coffee, and the third said it was just general sweetness. No one said they would have guessed that I served them hot cocoa. That is bad for any brand of instant cocoa mix. Can't recommend it.