good natural sweetner for chocolate smoothie?

Have you tried the Liquid Stevia drops. Amazon has all kinds of flavors from grape to rootbeer. You can get them at some health food stores too. I was craving chocolate today so I put a cup of hot water in the microwave, added a dropper full of chocolate stevia drops and it tasted just like Swiss Miss hot chocolate. Not sure if that's what you are looking for, but it's an option.

i tried a stevia soda once and really disliked it. i realize it's basically natural, but it still has that fake taste to me. i'd probably go with unrefined sugar before that. but thank you for the suggestion, it's much appreciated.

You can also add sweetened almond milk instead of regular milk, it's less calories, sweeter and tastes a lot better, it comes in vanilla and chocolate too.

Maple Syrup and Apple Sauce can also be used to sweeten things in certain recipes.

Or use a sweet fruit like banana.

Truvia is good too, that's stevia but instead of liquid drops it's a calorie free sugar like Splenda but instead of chemicals it's natural

I prefer rice milk, but using sweetened rice milk might be a great solution! Thanks. I'm not sure if it would be sweet enough (on its own) to cut the taste of unsweetened cocoa powder though... (part of me wishes there was a better solution for the chocolate taste that was relatively healthy... i don't think Quik is the answer, lol).

Applesauce. Hmm. Applesauce, oats, cocoa powder, sweetened rice milk in a blender with protein powder and chia seeds. That's either going to be amazing, or... something. But maybe worth a try -- my wife suggested dates, but that scares me too.

I have a ton of high quality maple syrup... my only concern would be it overpowering the chocolate. But again, worth a try and I'll experiment for at least a day with it.

Banana - too unpredictable for me. I've had all sorts of issues with getting/keeping them ripe, stinking up the freezer, etc.

Thanks for all the great ideas. I'm going to get to play mad scientist.

Something tells me i'm just not going to get the thick chocolate taste i'd like to get, though. But that doesn't mean it will be bad.

PB2! Awesome choices. I've been trying to look for PB2 but couldn't find it anywhere in my area. I read that it's 80%ish lower in calories. You won't really taste the dates once they are finely blend.(I use magic bullet) I don't like dates on its own to be honest lol I only use them to sweeten my smoothie and treats.

I would love to try agave but I was reluctant because of a few online articles I read about agave. I have read that it is not really low glycemics and because agave isn't naturally sweet they had to heavily refined the syrup to make it sweet. I'm not so sure if that is true, if anyone has more information to share on agave that would be nice.

G'luck with your chocolate smoothie endeavour.

Yea, I went with Just Great Stuff's version because it's organic and I try to avoid GMO where possible. But I'm really excited to try it. Back in the day when I didn't worry about cals (because i didn't have to), peanut butter was one of the trouble makers in my smoothies... my tablespoon was probably more like a quarter cup. So I'm thinking the powder will be easy to measure. Also, I use in-store-fresh-ground peanut butter so it's not super smooth for a smoothie anyway. I can always switch to fresh peanut butter when the powder runs out if i'd like.

Agave -- I don't know the science of it... it's quite possible there are issues with agave, i never used it because it was healthy, but rather because it's a great replacement for honey (both in sweetness and texture) in vegan recipes. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not as healthy as originally reported, but i also wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't as unhealthy as the articles now suggest. Sweetener companies are always at war with each other, trying to convince us we should buy this or that. (heck, you can already find anti-peanut butter powder articles on the net, some probably sponsored by jiffy).