Unleash Your VitalityYour Guide To Natural Health, Personal Fitness & Lifestyle Freedom

Here’s one that hits close to home: chocolate. It’s a worldwide phenomenon and a snacking bliss that’s been enjoyed since before you can remember. Actually, when you think about, how long has chocolate really been around? Chocolate bars with sugar, dairy and other additives certainly haven’t been around for centuries! Let’s take a look at a quick overview of how cacao came to be known in today’s world, and how much things have changed. I give you: “The Secret History Of Chocolate”.

Theobroma cacao was first native to South America (regions of the Amazon and Venezuela) as well as Central America and even key areas of Mexico. Cacao trees grow well in tropical climates and other areas with temperatures consistently in the 70s and 80s (degrees Fahrenheit). Because of this, as well as trading incentives, cacao from Venezuela was planted off the coast of Africa for the first time in the late 1500s. Thus began the incredible growth of cacao as an export for various nations in Africa over the next few hundred years!

What’s really exciting to me is what chocolate REALLY is…the cacao bean, sometimes called a nut, of the fruit of the cacao tree. Although more and more adults are starting to catch on to the true nature of the chocolate, the kids that are devouring sugar candy being sold as “milk chocolate” have no idea what true chocolate really is. What’s happened is that we’ve fallen completely out of touch with real, genuine food. The solution? Learning and education – exactly what you’re up to right now :)

If you’re not familiar with how cacao is grown, the trees produce bright, vibrant fruits year-round that often resemble American footballs in shape. These range from deep shades of a red-orange-yellow color all the way to a dark bluish-purplish color. They’re incredible to view – you just can’t help but wonder at them. They’re often harvested 2-3 times a year.

Breaking open these fruit pods, you’re likely to find a few dozen cacao beans in each (surrounded by the white, pulp-like fruit inside). It’s these cacao beans that are real chocolate – raw chocolate at it’s best. Raw cacao beans are loaded with nutrition, especially coming from the alkaline minerals that are becoming harder and harder to get in today’s food supply! Things like magnesium, iron, chromium and a number of other factors can all be found abundantly present in the raw cacao bean. So what are today’s chocolate bars?

It’s almost as if the history of chocolate has been hidden from us all this time. We’ve grown up on cacao beans that have had the oil pressed out of them, turning into cakes, and then been powdered into cacao powder or cocoa powder. This in itself is fine, but it’s what happens next that really makes the difference (although a lot of the nutritional value can be lost here, depending on the pressing process). What happens next?

Besides the myriad of other processing stations for mass-produced chocolate, poor-quality additives are blended into the mix. Dried milk powder, refined sugar and all sorts of artificial flavor chemicals are mixed together into a liquid that becomes a “milk chocolate” bar. My personal stance? No thanks!

Now, this is clearly not how every company operates. Mass production? Absolutely. Some of the new, up-and-coming organic chocolate brands? No way. The industry has come a long way quickly as people have demanded higher quality ingredients and products from manufacturers. We now recognize that it’s the not the synergy of dairy, sugar and chocolate that makes us feel good – it’s just the cacao, real chocolate.

The Mayans and Aztecs recognized the inherent value of the cacao bean centuries before the milk chocolate bar was first produced in 1879. When Cortez came to Tenochtitlan in the 1500s, he was surprised to find a currency not of gold, but of cacao beans. Did you read that? The ancient currency of choice was raw chocolate! Cacao drinks were prepared and enjoyed in their civilization, and it seems that chocolate played an even bigger role back then than it does today!

The secret history of chocolate may never be fully understood by our civilization. We’ll continue to uncover new history and information on chocolate as we move forward, as well as new nutritional discoveries as we advance in our understanding. For now? Think over and wonder about the history of chocolate during the day today. And more importantly, don’t settle for the cheap stuff :)

Sources: Wolfe, David. Superfoods: The Food and Medicine of the Future. Berkeley: North Atlantic, 2009. Print.

Unleash Your Vitality,

– John Brackett

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think!

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