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Raw Chocolate: The Real Deal
If you went raw for your health, raw chocolate has no place in your diet.

Yet after I made the plunge myself, I kept hearing it touted as a superfood and the height of nutrition.

I was baffled.

I'd been something of a cacao connoisseur in my cooked vegan days, and I thought I knew chocolate production quite well. All chocolate is produced via fermentation and/or heat, I was sure, and therefore not raw.

I may have loved chocolate before, but I knew it wasn't good for me in the long run, so I mentally bid it farewell with all the rest of my cooked favorites.

But now raw gurus are touting raw chocolate as a healthy superfood. Could raw chocolate be real? I decided to look into it.


The Cacao Tree and Bean
The fruit of the evergreen cacao tree, native to Mexico and South America, is the 6 to 12 inch cacao pod.
They ripen to yellowish color, and when you open one it's immediatly clear what part you should be eating. There's a delicious white pulp surrounding 20 or more seeds in each pod.

"This is better than chocolate," I told my friend as we devoured the pulp of a cacao pod some years ago.

Yet those seeds, which are usually called beans, hog all the attention because they they're made into chocolate.

What's in them? Lots of stuff you don't want in your body. There are stimulants like caffeine, theobromine, and theophyllin, and toxins like tannin, oxalic acid (which is known to cause kidney stones (1)), cannabinoids, and aflatoxins (which are known to stunt the growth of children and hamper the absorption of nutrients even in adults (2))

Raw Chocolate Production
Good for us or not, man has been producing chocolate for a long time. The Maya believed Quetzalcoatl gave cacao to the them after humans were created from maize. They celebrated an annual festival in April to honor the cacao god, Ek Chuah.
Several chocolate drinks are described in ancient texts for medical, ceremonial, and culinary uses. Some contain corn, vanilla, peanut butter and honey. Cacoa beans were so highly valued that they were used as currency.

Today the world is perhaps even more obsessed with chocolate, and production has increased tremendously.

Cocoa production increased from 1.5 million tons in 1983-1984 to 3.5 million tons in 2003-2004. (3)

Now, through some bizarre twist, raw foodists, who we could generally call health conscious, are embracing it too.

Raw Chocolate: Come Get Your Enervation
Chocolate is popular with raw foodists and SAD eaters for the same reason that a coffee habit is so hard to shake. People like the high they get off of caffeine and other psychoactive stimulant drugs contained in chocolate (4)
The body wants to get rid of these substances quickly, and it floods you with adrenaline. Heart rate increases, the blood pumps, and you feel very alert and alive.

This high is not without a cost, however, and rather than providing energy caffeine drains essentially steals from tomorrow's energy for a boost today. This is why after the caffeine is out of your system you feel so tired.

Can Chocolate Even Be Made Raw?
Raw chocolate is something of an impossibility. It's almost always heated, and always fermented.
In his blog, "The Chocolate Life," chocolate maker Koa Kahili takes on the idea of raw chocolate.

"A lot of people have been asking if Garden Island Chocolate is Raw. My answer is, "there is no such thing as Raw chocolate," he says. "Raw food is all food cooked below 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit), as defined by Wikipedia. The fermentation process in cacao generates temperatures as high as 125 degrees Fahrenheit...In conclusion, if "Raw" chocolate tastes like chocolate, chances are it's not "Raw". (5)

Even getting fermented but not cooked chocolate is still not a health food. We disregard rotten grapes, but wineries use them for the alcohol that makes us drunk. Fermented cacao is just as decayed.

Dr. Doug Graham agrees.

"First, there is no raw chocolate being sold, anywhere," he said. "In order to taste like chocolate, cacao beans must be heated. I have lived in the tropics and have tried to bring out the chocolate taste in other ways, it simply cannot be done. There is no such thing as raw chocolate. Even the chocolate that is fermented so said to be raw is eventually heated, and high enough to be cooked."

"I am sure you know that heating the proteins in chocolate denatures them and causes them to become carcinogenic. I assume you are aware that heating the carbohydrates caramelizes them, adversely affecting their GI rating and also creating carcinogens.

...The double bonds of the fats in chocolate become triple bonds under the influence of heat making them physiologically nonviable for humans and adversely impacting upon our cholesterol levels."

..."So, chocolate is not raw, is definitely not health food, and cannot be considered a superfood. There is nothing about marketing chocolate that can be considered a positive except for the possible bottom line profits that it may offer."(6)

Conclusion
If you follow a healthy raw food diet then raw chocolate has no place in your diet.
Eating fruit, not hyped up junk food, and experience true health.

Raw Chocolate Sources
(1) Morozumi M, Hossain RZ, Yamakawa KI, Hokama S, Nishijima S, Oshiro Y, Uchida A, Sugaya K, Ogawa Y (2006). "Gastrointestinal oxalic acid absorption in calcium-treated rats". Urol Res 34: 168. doi:10.1007/s00240-006-0035-7. PMID 16444511.
(2) Abbas, Hamed K. (2005). Aflatoxin and Food Safety, CRC Press. ISBN 0824723031.
(3) Coe, Sophie D.; and Michael D. Coe (1996). The True History of Chocolate. London: Thames & Hudson.
(4) Maughan, RJ; Griffin J (2003). "Caffeine ingestion and fluid balance: a review.". J Human Nutrition Dietetics 16: 411–20.
(5) The Chocolate Life Blog, November 4, 2008,: [www.thechocolatelife.com]
(6) VegSource Message Board, June 5, 2005, "Chocolate": [www.vegsource.com]



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Wow. I am not a chocolate freak myself, though I like a bit now and then. But wow. Poor Vanessa Barg!

I don't mind in the slightest that you posted my article here, but it's generally considered good manners to at least post a link to where you got it: [www.raw-food-health.net]

Golly I'm sorry. I won't do it again.

No need to be sorry. Just letting you know.

some of those toxins in the bean could be changed if heated- just like in spinach or chard which also both contain oxalic acid..but I'm sure there are other things that share the toxins in the bean because most food we eat has an amount of toxic compound in it; i would say if chocolate does anything it's the caffeine that stimulates the kidneys. Too much and you'll probably get something going on. It's probably addicting from the caffeine and the happy-hormones it makes your brain produce, haha. But some people say that's a good property.

It's probably called a superfood because it's also got good things in it, like antioxidant flavanols, calcium, iron, carotene, thiamine, and riboflavin. I could add what each does to help someone, like the article has labeled what the toxins do to harm someone, but I'll leave that to people who are interested enough to look it uppp.


So it's a battle of people for it and people against it!

I don't really care because I don't eat it; but just saying, there's always pros and cons it seems...and jumping to conclusionnnss.