All about chocolate;

From Cacao to Chocolate.

Let's talk about chocolate: There is Healthy,Organic,dark chocolate and then,there is candy!

Most chocolate is fermented, heated, alkalized, full of refined sugar and additives. The greatest health benefit of chocolate comes from an organic cacao bean that has not been treated with alkalis (Dutch process) or heated. Let me tell you all about chocolate and the process of making it:

Chocolate is made from the seed of the tropical cacao tree, native to lowland, tropical South America, Africa, and Malaysia.

Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Central America and Mexico, with its earliest documented use around 1100 BC. The majority of the Mesoamerican peoples made chocolate beverages, including the Maya and Aztecs, who made it into a beverage known as xocolâtl, a Nahuatl word meaning "bitter water". The term cacao often refers to the beans before they are fermented and dried. The seeds of the cacao tree have an intense bitter taste, and must be fermented to develop the flavor.

After fermentation, the beans are dried, cleaned, and roasted, and the shell is removed to produce cacao nibs. The nibs are then ground and liquified, resulting in pure chocolate in fluid form: chocolate liquor. The liquor can be further processed into two components: cocoa solids and cocoa butter.

Cacao is a fruit

MOre about chocolate manufacturing: Chocolate is manufactured from cocoa mass, the base product produced by processing the cacao beans or nibs. It is fermented and then roasted. The final product is a liquid called chocolate liquor, which is very "thick" or viscous. Because cacao beans are nuts, and all nuts contain fat - (in this case the fat known as cocoa butter), it has a very high viscosity at room temperature, like soft butter made from dairy cream. The chocolate liquor can be molded and hardened into the bitter chocolate known as unsweetened baking chocolate.

White Chocolate

One recent study showed eating plain, dark chocolate increased antioxidant capacity. These gains, however, were significantly reduced if the chocolate was milk chocolate or consumed with milk. The study concluded that milk may erase the benefits of eating dark chocolate (Source, “Plasma antioxidants from chocolate,” Nature, 8/03).

Another study focused on white chocolate versus dark. The study compared 13 men and women, ages 55-64, who had untreated, mild hypertension (Source, “Chocolate and Blood Pressure in Elderly Individuals with Isolated Systolic Hypertension," Journal of the American Medical Association, 8/03).

Participants were randomly assigned two weeks of a daily intake of 90 grams of white or dark chocolate. Within 10 days of the experiment’s beginning, those eating dark chocolate had significantly lowered their blood pressure, while those eating white chocolate had not.

However, the results did not last beyond the dark chocolate intake; participants’ blood pressures returned to pre-chocolate level within two days of stopping the chocolate intake. Read more about chocolate; dark, milk or white?

Dark chocolate vs milk chocolate

Dark chocolate has recently been promoted for its health benefits, including a substantial amount of antioxidants that reduce the formation of free radicals, though the presence of theobromine renders it toxic to some animals, such as dogs and cats.

Chocolate contains alkaloids such as theobromine and phenethylamine which have physiological effects on the body. It has been linked to serotonin levels in the brain. Scientists claim that chocolate, eaten in moderation, can lower blood pressure.

Read more from Wikipedia…

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