People are often confused about the nature of the cacao bean/nut and the final chocolate product that most in the western world are familiar with, and weather or not there are health benefits to be derived from either.
I will have to take the stance that I can’t definitively say whether or not chocolate in any form is “healthy” or not…but what I can do is offer a few thoughts on it to help you make the decision for yourself, while stating that I do consume chocolate several times a week, and on occasion, the cacao bean/nut itself.
Essentially, if you are going to eat truly raw chocolate, it would be in the form of the cacao bean/nut (people refer to them as either beans or nuts, but I believe from a strictly technical/botany standpoint, it is a nut…I’ll let the experts in that area argue it out). You can even purchase bars of unsweetened cacao, referred to on the label itself as cacao, that would be used for cooking.
You have all also seen the unsweetened chocolate bars for cooking.
The only difference that I have been able to discern between the two, unsweetened chocolate vs unsweetened cacao, is that the chocolate has likely undergone just a bit more of a processing procedure as compared to the cacao, which has been reduced to a different form with as little processing as possible, no additives or solvents involved.
There is a lot of controversy about both, and their health benefits.
The raw foodists are of course big on the cacao as a naturally occurring edible with huge anti-oxidant properties, magnesium, and a very large host of other macro and micro nutrients.
But the chocolate bars most of us are familiar with have been processed to such an extent that much of the nutritional value of the original cacao has been reduced, potentially to a great extent.
This is not to say that a quality form of chocolate is still not worth consuming, if chocolate is your thing.
But the trick is to look for what are the healthiest and most appropriate options that can enable you to both indulge your sweet tooth a bit, as well as derive some nutritional value from the food.
In this regard we look always to the dark chocolates, not the milk chocolates. Then to the percentage of cocoa on the label and then to the sugar content and additives on the nutritional label and ingredients.
Common milk chocolate bars are nothing more than chocolatized sugar cubes. Nutritional value is next to none in these bars.
Most of the brand name dark chocolates are not much better, loaded with plenty of unhealthy additives.
So I simply look for the shortest ingredient labels filled with nothing but organic ingredients, very preferably Fair Trade ingredients, and then I always shoot for the 85% to 87% dark chocolate/cacao.
My favorite brands would be Dagoba, Sweetriot, and Green & Blacks.
I’ll dip my chocolate in my favorite raw almond butter and add a bite of organic rice cake in my mouth and it’s quite…DARN…delish. 🙂