Is it good or is it bad for you?
Well, it has certainly maintained its reputation of being fattening yet delicious with some sense of gallantry.
But isn’t chocolate a superfood? Yes, it is, so what gives? Good or bad?
Well it’s simple, pure dark chocolate, especially when raw and unprocessed, is good for you. Very good! But it’s everything else that most manufacturers add to the chocolate is what’s bad.
That is what makes chocolate fattening. Chocolate often contains various other chemicals and ingredients intended to make it pretty and lower its cost of manufacturing; ingredients such as emulsifiers, wax, vegetable oil, and more baddies.
Note I earlier used the qualifying adjective Dark, i.e., without dairy. Dairy has been shown to neutralize many of the superfood qualities found in cacao, actually the flavonoids.
But let’s stick with pure dark chocolate (no milk chocolate or white chocolate), the superfood, the kind we use at Hnina.
Ok, chocolate is not without calories, and could be fattening if over eating.
But so do avocados, almonds, sweet potatoes and most extremely nourishing foods.
So let’s define chocolate calories as good beneficial calories, whereas refined sugar and rancid vegetable oil are bad calories and dangerous for you.
Flavanoids (including flavanols, flavones, flavanones, and others) are potent antioxidants capable of inducing nitric oxide-dependent vasodilation (widening of the arteries), as well as having antiplatelet and anti-inflammatory effects.
All this means it’s good for your heart and vascular system. Cacao is actually the most complex food in the world.
With more than 1,200 constituents, it contains a far greater amount of antioxidants than all of the world’s leading antioxidant-rich foods.
Here are just a few of raw dark chocolate’s health benefits.
So good or bad? You now understand.
Eat it pure, raw and dark chocolate and it’s excellent. Otherwise, not so good to very bad.
This is why at Hnina we looked for such a long time to find a delicious unprocessed raw chocolate.
The goal was a wonderful taste and experience first, but also 100% guilt free and loaded with powerful nutrients.
We achieved that and it makes us very happy.
We love what we do and the fact that such good food is also so nutritious and good for us.
A votre santé!
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Today is National Chocolate Covered Nut Day. Woo hooo! Now if that doesn't call for a note from moi and a promotion I don't know what does.
I grew up in a very diverse environment. My mom being from Tunisia in the Maghreb, North Africa always had sprouted nuts at home. My father is from the city of Czernowitz in Eastern Europe (country affiliation changing throughout history) where fermented food was a staple.....and he was a chocolate addict!
Gee, no surprise I guess that I find myself engaged in the pursuit of:
THE PERFECT FERMENTED RAW CHOCOLATE COVERED SPROUTED NUT!
(cue in thundering music.....tan tan taaaan!)
Raw cacao mass and single origin: the importance of flavors.
Raw cacao mass was essential to us. When we started Hnina we searched for cacao mass, also known as cacao liquor or cacao paste, for over four years until we finally found the one we loved.
