From Cacao to Coco Naturally

All of us love chocolate. And most of us know that chocolate is good for you. But do any of us know that commercially produced chocolate is not that good for you, because of the way it’s made?

Here is the story. To make the chocolate manufacturers use cacao beans. They roast them, grind them; etc, and then the beans become the cocoa, all of us know.

Cacao beans are extremely good for you. They have the most antioxidants out of any other types of food, even more than blueberries! Cacao beans are good for skin, hair, and nails because of sulfur; and they are good for circulation, because of magnesium; cacao is an anti-depressant, helps reduce PMS symptoms, promotes increased focus and alertness, relaxation; and   of course it’s an aphrodisiac, which famous Casanova supposedly used to swear by.

However, by eating commercially produced chocolate, we almost don’t get any of that!

The best way to consume chocolate, based on my research, is to buy raw organic cacao beans, and then either eat them as they are, or mix them up with honey or agave syrup; or to prepare them various ways, for example make shakes, sprinkle over yogurts, cereals, oat meals, ice cream, etc.

There are a number of recipes that you can get from many websites.

Here are some of the ones I like:

http://www.expertvillage.com/expert/277.htm – Expert Village with Kelly Johnson

http://goneraw.com/recipes/334-Raw-Chocolate – Gone Raw

http://www.naked-chocolate.com/recipes/ – Naked Chocolate from David Wolfe

And it is easy to find raw chocolate beans too. I get mine from Whole Foods. And I also like www.iHerb.com. They have the cheapest shipping. And if you go to www.yelp.com and enter www.iherb.com, you can find a lot of comments from different people, and many of them provide discount codes, which I found very useful!

You can either get peeled raw dried cacao beans, or unpeeled ones.

I hope this info was useful to everyone. If you know any more cool recipes of raw organic chocolate, please share then with the world!

Cheers, friends!