Oh wonderful, delicious, delightful food of the gods… chocolate. Say it again Tim, chocolate. Everyone should have their very own cacao tree from which they can harvest cacao beans and make sumptuous chocolate.
So here is the problemo: too many of you like the sickeningly sweet commercial varieties of chocolate that are really bad bad for you (that’s double bad). I am here to raise the bar… step it up sista. In fact, due to the processing, large amounts of sugar, and poor quality milk, most chocolate can be very damaging to your health.
Soooo… what should you do? What to do? You should develop and cultivate a healthy appreciation for chocolate made right. You should nurture this appreciation within your heart until the love has grown full bloom and then you can take more pleasure in it… the appreciation that is… well, and the chocolate.
Chocolate that is made with minimal processing and little sugar (or no refined sugar) will in fact provide healthy antioxidants and give your body a boost while you savor every bite.
So here are some pointers when buying and eating your chocolate:
1. Look for chocolate that has at least 70% cocoa content. More cocoa content means there is less room for other bad things, less sugar, less milk, etc.
2. Look at what type of sugar is used. Most will just say ‘sugar’ which means it is typical refined white sugar. Some specialty brands may say ‘evaporated cane juice’ which is far better. So look for unrefined sugar if you can find it.
3. Most chocolate is processed with alkali to cut the acidity and for other reasons which I will not go into now… but if you can find it where it has not been processed with alkali then that is better.
4. Organic or fair trade chocolate is highly recommended. Organic and fair trade farmers raise cacao crops without the use of synthetic fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.
Some recommended brands:
Rapunzel
Dagoba
Endangered Species
Chocolove
All of these brands have high quality chocolate available in their prodect line. As far as taste… Chocolove is my favorite… and they have good standards, I just think Rapunzel is a little bit better in that regard. I don’t like the shape of Rapunzel’s bar though. Chocolove’s is just right.
Welp, I am out… I have to go plant my cacao tree.
