Benefits of Carob

If you're only interested in saturated fat content, then I would agree with Julie and say that you might as well use chocolate chips.

However, there are other reasons people substitute carob for chocolate:

Nutritionally, carob has none of the allergy-producing antibodies or the caffeine stimulant theobromine found in the cocoa bean. Carob contains as much vitamin B1 as asparagus or strawberries, the same amount of niacin as lima beans, lentils or peas and more vitamin A than eggplant, asparagus and beets. It is also high in vitamin B2, calcium, magnesium and iron.

These are the fat and sugar stats that I found on carob (I don't know if my source is more reliable than Julies', all I can say for sure is that it's different):

Carob powder can be used to replace cocoa at levels from 25-50%. While carob performs like cocoa, it differs in sugar and fat content. Cocoa may contain up to 23% fat and 5% sugar while carob has .7% fat and a natural sugar content of 42-48%.