Diet-friendly Valentine’s Day treats

Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey. All well and good, but what if you or your honey is battling the bulge?

We’ve scoured the shelves to find you a selection of diet-friendly treats that are just as tasty as a box of dairy milk fancies…

Southern Alps – No 14 Slow Strawberry

A total departure from chocolate and its substitutes, Southern Alps have slow dried strawberries and bagged them up into packs of around 20 large heart-shaped treats.

Tasty, totally additive (and guilt) free and with the added bonus of supposed aphrodisiac properties, they make a tempting alternative.

Romance rating: 4/5
Taste rating: 3/5

Bendicks Bittergingers

The darker the chocolate, the more diet-friendly, and a filling of bitterest ginger has some – slightly tenuous – benefits for dieters too.

Ginger is a digestive aid, helping to relieve sexy indigestion, romantic trapped wind and amorous tummy cramping.

The foil-wrapped chocs looked great, and would definitely spice up post-candlelight coffee and, thanks to the bitterness, only the most hardened chocolate addict would be able to OD on them.

Romance rating: 3/5
Taste rating: 3/5

Werther’s Originals Sugar Free

Grandad’s on a diet? Werther’s Originals have launched a sugar-free version of themselves and they’re yummers. They have nine calories per sweet, and fiddly little packets that – if nothing else – slow down fingers desperate to get at them.

They taste a small skip from the sugar-full version, and have the same texture and reassuring aftertaste.

Romance rating: 2/5
Taste rating: 4/5

Haribo Lite

Thankfully everyone knows that too much sorbitol makes you poo. Which is the only reason we managed to pace ourselves with the pack and avoid public humiliation and over-eating.

The little jelly sweets have 30% less calories and 40% less sugar than standard Haribo gums.

They tasted almost identical to their full-sugar stable mates, but without the ritz and fizz of the better known selections.

A good call for a kitsch Valentine.

Romance rating: 2/5
Taste rating: 3/5

Bendicks of Mayfair (125g dark chocolate bars)

Not strictly a diet choc, but by wrapping mini-bars individually, you’re less likely to scoff down the whole jumbo pack. Or are you? The trouble is, this is some of the nicest chocolate we’ve ever sampled and – especially after a spell in the fridge – we found it impossible to stop at one.

Technically, with a high cocoa content and individual wrapping, these make for a luxury low GI treat, but in practise a great deal of willpower is needed.

Romance rating: 5/5
Taste rating: 5/5