Options Belgian Choc Instant Cups – 24 calories

Wandering around Poundland last week in search of some cleaning products, I inevitably found myself browsing the food section. There's always a good selection of Weight Watchers products here, but often you’ll find products for sale that don't seem to be sold in regular supermarkets.

One such item is hot chocolate drinks in vending cups. This week I noticed a pack from Options in the Belgian Choc flavour. Each cup has only 24 calories!



Options are my favourite brand of instant hot chocolate (now running close with Galaxy Bubbles), because they’re low in calories, taste nice and aren't thin and watery.

Options individual hot chocolate sachets are already low calorie with just 37 calories per sachet. So I figured the only way these cups could outdo the sachets in the calorie stakes, was to use less chocolate powder.

And, this is indeed the case. Each Options Belgian Choc cup contains only 6.5g of powder compared with 11g for the sachets, so just over half the amount of powder in the cups.

Whether or not you have an actual vending machine doesn’t seem to matter too much. You can buy these packs of vending machine cups to use wherever you like.

There are two stacks of four cups, with the cup on top acting as a lid. Opening them up, there is a little over a teaspoon of powder (see photo below).

The description on the packs says 'so rich & creamy only 24 calories in a cup', but much as I love Options drinks, I doubted this would be the case.

Pouring out the hot water and giving it a stir, produces a dark coloured drink, but rather thin and insipid in appearance. It is sweet, no sweetener is necessary, but I can’t honestly say it’s rich. It’s the sort of drink I’d expect from a waiting room vending machine, and if I was in a waiting room I’d be happy to drink it, knowing there were only 24 calories. But, since I’m drinking this at my desk, I had to add another teaspoon of Options Chocolate from the jar in my cupboard, which added extra flavour and thickness.

These Options cups could be good if you just need something to fill you up a bit and you don’t fancy a cup of tea or coffee.

Found in Poundland. Packed and distributed by Brupac Drinks.

Nutrition Information per 6.5g cup: 24 calories, 1.0g protein, 3.5g carbohydrates, 2.7g sugar, 0.7g fat, 0.6g saturates, 0.5g fibre, 0.2g salt.  

Note: the traffic label below looks worrying, but bear in mind this is per 100g of the product.

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