A devoted chocolate lover will always be sure to tell you about the health benefits of their favorite sweet treat. “It’s full of antioxidants, it’s good for your heart and it prevents cognitive decline,” one will say while shoveling down a box of chocolate truffles. Like lovers of red wine, chocolate addicts have a myriad of scientific studies to back up their claims, the collection of research into cacao suspiciously disproportionate to less delicious foods.

Chocolate lovers are right, in a way. At the heart of every bar of chocolate there indeed lies an ingredient with many proven health benefits. The problem is, the cacao bean is usually so overwhelmed by the milk, sugar and other ingredients that are added to chocolate that it has little room left to do its good work in your body. Knowing this, many people wisely opt for dark chocolate because it has more cacao beans and less milk and sugar.

Chicaoji takes cacao bean purity a step further by using the raw cacao and nothing else. The cacao ‘nibs’ in Chicaoji are cacao beans that have been broken into smaller pieces. These nibs taste somewhat bitter on their own, but when they are blended with sweet agave nectar, they impart a flavor that chocolate lovers will recognize well. Using raw cacao beans in Chicaoji allows us to share some of the nutrient dense compounds in cacao that have fueled chocolate’s good reputation.

Here are a few of the reasons we use raw cacao:

• Cacao beans are widely considered to be the best source of antioxidants, easily overtaking antioxidant-rich foods like green tea and blueberries.
• A bitter-tasting compound in cacao beans called epicatechin has so many health benefits that some researchers say it should be considered a vitamin. Epicatechin is usually removed from processed cacao because of its intense flavor.
• The polyphenols and magnesium found in cacao are both good for heart health.
• Cacao is a natural anti-depressant, promoting a positive mood with safe doses of dopamine, serotonin, tryptophan and phenylethylamine.

P.S.

I want to thank Alia O’Connell for helping me compose this blog article. I very much enjoy her style of writing. She does a great job of ordering my jumbled thoughts and ideas. I made only a couple of edits for emphasis. Alia is available to help you with your needs for well-composed English.
Alia O’Connell ~ aliaoconnell@nullyahoo.com

Photo credits go to Pacari. I used images from their website for this post.

If you know that food is medicine, then you understand Chicaoji.
Thank you for reading the Chicaoji blog!
Randall