Shallow as it may sound, I'm a sucker when it comes to a pretty wrapper so far as chocolate is concerned. And beautiful packaging is what caught my eye and held my attention when it came to Seeds of Change chocolate.

Seeds of Change is a progressive food company whose frozen entrees I'd already noticed at my local health food store. Now they've branched out and started making chocolate -- very unique chocolate.

They have half a dozen varieties of chocolate bars, all of which are available for sale on their Web site. One is a plain dark bar; the rest are busy blends of nuts, fruits, essential oils, and other ingredients.

Even before you get to the chocolate itself, the wrappers are works of art. I'm sure I've said this before, but I've noticed that chocolate manufacturers who go all out on the artwork tend to be offering a product worth tasting. It's as if they can't stop caring about their product, from the inside out.

The chocolates give the artists at Seeds of Change plenty of room to paint a beautiful, eye-catching picture. These are no mincing miniature bars. Each is a good hefty three and a half ounces, which may not sound like much if you don't often buy chocolate, but which gives you a solid six inch by three inch chunk of chocolate. This is not a bar you could tuck into a pocket and forget about.

You won't forget the flavor, either. I tried two bars, and both of them are so strong and vigorous that a little goes a very long way.

The first was the Bayano bar, a 70% cacao flavored with cacao nibs and cinnamon oil. Do not give this bar to the milk chocolate lover in your life. They'll probably faint after a single bite.

The chocolate itself is deep and uncompromising. Cacao nibs, which are fragments of cacao beans, pack all the wallop of chocolate and none of the sweetness we rely on in even the darkest chocolate. And then there's the cinnamon oil. Cinnamon, like chocolate, is something we think of as sweet simply because we usually have it in a sweetened form. Try it in this bar, and you'll never mistake it for a mild, childish flavor again.

I'm tentatively enjoying my bar of Bayano, though I have yet to be able to take a full bite of it. It's the strongest chocolate I've ever tasted, and I've tasted chocolate flavored with chili powder and wasabi. I can imagine trying a little of this bar first thing in the morning and springing out of bed without need of any other stimulant. I also imagine -- and this may be an odd compliment to pay a chocolate -- that this will be a wonderful bar to have on hand the next time I catch a cold or have a sore throat.

The other bar, the Narragansett, is a more conventional but still vigorous bar -- a 61% cacao spiked with candied pecans, cranberries, and orange oil. The front of the wrapper doesn't warn the consumer that cinnamon oil features strongly here. It's a shame, because the taste really crowds out the orange oil, and orange-flavored chocolate is one of my favorite combinations. But this bar is something that one could more easily sit down and really munch on.

Neither of them are bars that anyone could eat absentmindedly. And maybe that's the point. Seeds of Change is passionately concerned about the environment and the state of the planet, and probably the last thing they want from anyone is mindless consumption.