What’s the deal with carob?

It looks like cacao, it smells like cacao but… is it?

We often get asked if carob is a suitable substitute for cacao, but it turns out they’re very different products.

What even is carob?

You might have seen carob in one of its many forms at your local health food shop. Carob grows as a pod on carob trees across the globe and is picked, dried, roasted and ground to make a powder or turned into a syrup. It’s often marketed as a substitute for cocoa, cacao or chocolate because it’s super sweet!

So, can I use it as a substitute?

Nope, no, never. The reason carob is so sweet is because it’s chock-full of fructose. While it’s low in fat, carob powder (or carob flour) comes in at nearly 50 per cent sugar (!!!), where as cacao is only two per cent sugar.

With nutritional info like that, we’ll be leaving carob on the shelf!

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