This week we take a moment to review PEAK Chocolate: High performance chocolate for functional fitness athletes.
Item: PEAK High Performance Chocolate
Price: $5.90 AUD for a block (50g)/$59 AUD for 12 blocks
Retailer: PEAK Chocolate
Purchase: www.PEAKChocolate.com.au
I’ve been dreaming of a way for chocolate to fit perfectly into my life since I started CrossFit.
I’ve snuck it into my macros any way I could think of and hoped that if it was 75 per cent dark chocolate it really wouldn’t affect my goals (though whiskey gets more in the way than chocolate).
Now, with PEAK Chocolate I get to enjoy at least one of my weaknesses guilt-free. In fact, it’s more than guilt-free. It tastes fantastic and it helps my training.
PEAK Chocolate is the brainchild of Pacific Regional athletes Raph Freedman and Rory Boyden who co-own CrossFit Creature in Sydney, Australia.
Like many CrossFitters, the boys were following a Paleo-like diet and were eating a lot of dark chocolate when they came up with the idea to start PEAK Chocolate.
“Then, we were eating a lot at night and found it was keeping us awake because of the caffeine content and realised it was fucking sweet to have before a workout with creatine and BCAAs,” Raph said.
In order to simplify what was becoming a fairly time consuming pre-workout ritual, the pair started melting their supplements with high quality dark chocolate at home.
Thus, the concept of PEAK Chocolate was born.
Now, more than 18 months down the track, the final product is on the market!
I’ve tried a few different pre-workout ideas, not all of them great, and a serve of PEAK Chocolate has me firing on all cylinders.
It’s made from 80 per cent dark chocolate, and each packet contains two serves. Each serve has an espresso shot and comes with creatine and BCAAs. It’s also gluten, dairy and preservative free!
Here are my thoughts on PEAK chocolate and whether I think it’s a good product for athletes to buy:
The Good
Taste: The taste is absolutely fantastic. The chocolate is smooth and has the great slightly bitter taste of high quality dark chocolate. PEAK say they’ve sourced high quality because they weren’t interested in making a cheap product. That decision seems to have paid off.
Caffeine Hit: PEAK Chocolate is great before a workout and it’s also great if you happen to be a shift worker (like I am from time to time). Each serving of PEAK chocolate comes with 70mg of caffeine. I took a serve to work with me a couple of times and got into it at around 3 to 4 in the morning, when I usually struggle to stay awake, and it kept me going.
Price: At first glance, $5.90 for a packet seems expensive. But with two-days worth of pre-workout per packet it actually works out pretty cheap at $2.45 per serve – especially if it also replaces a cup of coffee from a café.
Packaging: The cardboard packaging is simple and stylish with black and aqua colours and easy to get into. The inside of each box is padded. And from the seven packets I’ve had, the chocolate has been 100 per cent in tact on the inside. When it comes to getting the chocolate out of the plastic packet it’s super easy. Just pull it apart and you have your chocolate – no hassle at all.
The Bad
Just one flavour: What if you don’t like dark chocolate? Well if you don’t, this product probably isn’t for you and for now there are no other choices. Whether there will be is yet to be seen, but since the principals of PEAK Chocolate are that the boys wouldn’t sell you anything they wouldn’t use themselves, I’d bet a milk or white chocolate alternative is unlikely.
No International Shipping: Probably one of the biggest cons is that the product is only available to Australian customers at the moment. The online check out cart does not have any other options in the ‘country’ drop down men except Australia. Hopefully in the future PEAK will cater for International customers as well.
Bad luck if you don’t like caffeine: Each serving of PEAK chocolate comes with 70mg of caffeine. So bad luck if you’re an athlete who doesn’t like caffeine! It’d be good to see PEAK come out with a version of their chocolate without caffeine to cater for the non-caffeine CrossFitters as well.
Conclusion
Honestly, that’s it. This is one of the best products I’ve tried in a while. PEAK chocolate is reasonably priced, tastes great and does what it’s advertised to do.
It’s also comforting to be able to buy chocolate which is made by CrossFitters for CrossFitters.
But the best way is to try it for yourself. If you’re a chocolate and fitness lover, the head to the PEAK website by clicking here to find out more about their product. Just make sure you don’t head to peakchocolate.com, unless you’re looking for dark chocolate with marijuana instead!
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