Archive for the 'Healthy Recipies' Category
To have a chocolate health experience switch from commercial chocolate to pure raw chocolate. Seriously if you’re concerned about chocolate having any health effects then consider for a moment that the actual cocoa bean has it’s perks but the added ingredients like cow’s milk and refined sugar cancel out the so called chocolate health benefits.
Contrary to popular belief cows milk is not healthy for people, let alone mixing it with sugar and cocoa beans that have been destroyed of their original contents. Antioxidants in cocoa beans have a positive effect but that is all. You will not find those effects in commercial chocolate. The main ingredient in commercial chocolate is cows’ milk.
It makes sense because if you think about it humans are the only ones that drink milk from some one else. Baby pigs drink pigs milk from their pig mothers. Monkeys drink monkey milk from their monkey mothers and every other animal drinks its mother’s milk. Only humans have the notion that mothers cow milk is good for them. Tons of cows milk is used to produce chocolate.
I’m one of those people that loves chocolate but at the same time I have a health awareness. So realising that commercial chocolate deposits slug into my body I had to find an alternative. Have you ever thought about what your body has to go through to digest cow’s milk, mixed with refined sugar? Uuuugghhh….doesn’t surprise me that people have so many ailments considering what they put into their bodies.
But fear not you can still eat chocolate, but get the pure and unadulterated raw chocolate.
Huh! You mean you never even knew there was such a thing?
You’re about to learn some thing new.
Let’s take a quick look at the difference of cooked cocoa powder and raw cocoa powder which is the essential ingredient in chocolatey things.
Producers use different ORAC units in their marketing, which result in confusion when one is comparing one ORAC score to another.
ORAC simply means Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity
An example to illustrating a popular confusion: both dark cocoa powder and the goji berry (the goji berry is a superfood from China) are high on the ORAC scale. Natural cocoa powder pinnacles the list with a score of 26,000. The goji berry rates mightily, with a score frequently found on the internet of 25,300. But what is creating confusion amongst end users is that the cocoa powder and the goji ORAC ratings are for 100 grams! That’s more than an average serving. If you calculate the ORAC units per gram you quickly see that dark cocoa powder is at 260 and goji is 253.
Not bad, but that’s nothing compared to the gigantic 955 ORAC Units found in each gram of raw organic cacao powder!
WOW – isn’t that fantastic? Tha’s real proof that real chocolate is a health booster!
Do the math – the raw variant contains 367% more antioxidants than the ultimate cooked version – no better proof than that! The same 100 gram scale as above, Raw Organic Cacao Powder has 95,500 ORAC units in contrast to the 26,000 in the roasted cocoa powder.
So go ahead and sin!
I purchase my chocolate health products from Raw Food World
Would you believe there are a whole lot of chocolate health benefits growing on trees right now? The sought after cocoa bean which is indigenous to Africa and South America should be eaten in it’s naked raw form for the ultimate chocolate experience.
The taste is quite heavenly. I’m talking about the real thing which comes from the cocao plant , pronounced kuhkow and not cocoa. We are all familiar with the commercial chocolate made from roasted cacao beans. Actually the cacao bean is one of nature’s most powerful foods.
The typical cocoa which we use for baking, or use in chocolate fondue recipes has been defatted and treated with chemicals and alkaline salts.
So lets take a squizz at raw chocolate health ingredients:
Raw cocoa is abundant in flavanoids. What the heck is a flavanoid you be asking now. No it’s not an added flavorant , it’s a class of phyto chemicals called polyphenols. Thousands of flavanoids exist in ample amounts in plant based foods. Latest studies reveal that some flavanoids protect from certain diseases, especially heart diseases.
Potent antioxidants – more than in red wine, We all know that sipping too much red wine can get you into trouble! So rather nibble on chocolate. Antoxidants significantly reduce the risk of heart attack.
Copper- a lot of women have a copper deficiency. A good source of copper is in liver. Yuck – I’d rather eat chocolate.
Phenylethylamine followed closely by theobromo which is the magic ingredient of lifting depressions.
Raw chocolate also has small amounts of straight caffeine, great for a little lift me up snack.
Magnesium which is also credited for giving one those euphoric feelings when eating chocolate. If you’re a woman then take note that magnesium levels drop during menstruation so it’s a good time to tuck into chocolate.
Serotonin and tyramine are also in raw chocolate, which have a gentle calming effect.
So when you get the blues eat chocolate – no wonder it’s called a comfort food because it has exactly that ability – to comfort. But I must warn you dear reader that only raw chocolate has these chocolate health qualities. If commercial chocolate lures you and you like to munch a lot of it, then don’t expect to have to have these astounding chocolate health affects.
Raw chocolate fondue recipe
Half a cup of almond butter
Half a cup of raw cocoa nibs
1 cup of agave nectar
Inch of a vanilla bean
Half a teaspoon of salt
First mix the almond butter and raw cocoa nibs together. Hand mixing works just fine.
Then add the agave nectar.
Cut the inch of vanilla bean length ways and scrape out the seeds.
Add the vanilla and salt.
Fold into the mixture and keep mixing till you have a creamy consistency.
Strawberries and other fruit chunks can de dipped into the divine chocolate mixture.
Great fun for the family – and radiate in a chocolate health aura!
I purchase my chocolate health products from Raw Food World
We are what we think and what we eat! The people who know me, know that I believe in the power of thoughts. I myself have come from a place of thinking gone wrong. My thinking was the part of me that kept me down in my place, there with the have nots and whiners. Let me say this every moment I am becoming more aware of my thoughts and where they are leading me to. Which gets me to the subject of eating. Eating is part of our survival, just like our thinking!