Your Favorite Ice Cream Topping is our Newest Flavor!

Have you ever eaten chocolate hazelnut spread on toast? Eaten spoons of it right out of the jar? Swooned at even the thought of the deliciousness of chocolate hazelnut spread swirled over vanilla ice cream? If so, I am about to make your day. Maybe even your year. Most chocolate hazelnut spreads are full of sugar and milk chocolate. Some even have a variety of additives and preservatives. We wouldn’t call them superfoods. But we would happily grant that term to nutritionally dense hazelnuts. So, here at Zing, we are introducing a few new bar flavors, and (warning: spoiler alert!) one of them is Dark Chocolate Hazelnut. We just couldn’t resist waiting until the official release date of June 15^th to spread the news. We’ve combined two superfoods – hazelnuts and dark chocolate – and put them into a bar that is as scrumptious as it is nutritious. We’ve talked about dark chocolate in our blog before and its health benefits tend to be all over the news. Dark chocolate is very high in antioxidants and can be protective against cardiovascular disease and cancer. But who knew that hazelnuts were such a nutritional powerhouse? Hazelnuts, like any raw or dry roasted nuts, are heart healthy. They are high in monounsaturated fats which are important for heart health. Research has shown that eating just 1.5 ounces of hazelnuts per day (about 1/3 of a cup) may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. They are also a good source of fiber, vitamin E, B vitamins and magnesium. Hazelnuts have more folic acid (or folate) than any other tree nut. Folate is important for women of childbearing years to prevent neural tube birth defects. Folate is also vital for heart health and can reduce risk of depression. Hazelnuts also have the highest proanthocyanidin content of any tree nut. These compounds are known for contributing astringent flavor to foods and may help reduce the risk of blood clotting and urinary tract infections. Hazelnuts are also among the top three nuts highest in antioxidant capacity. The other two are pecans and walnuts. Hazelnuts’ ORAC score (the gold standard measure of antioxidant capacity) puts them in the superfoods category. That’s a lot of good reasons to include hazelnuts in your diet on a regular basis. Throw them in salads, include them in your homemade trail mix, and enjoy our Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Zing bars as soon as you can get your hands on them….just one more week to go until these are in stock in our online store. Now, put down that jar of chocolate hazelnut spread with artificial stuff, and pick up one of our guilt-free, decadent bars. You are going to be in heaven. And it’s a healthy version of heaven too!