The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health did a study involving 192,000 adults over several years, and found that people who eat at least an ounce of dark chocolate every day have a 21% lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
Research has shown that the healthy polyphenols in chocolate may have numerous health benefits, including improved heart health and brain function.
It’s important to remember that most mass-market chocolate undergoes a process called “alkalization,” which not only removes all the natural flavors in the cacao but most of the polyphenols as well. We NEVER alkalize our chocolate or our cacao powder, so all of the natural flavors and healthy polyphenols are still in there.
Discovering whether or not chocolate is alkalized can sometimes be tricky – although chocolate companies in the United States are required to say on the label that the chocolate has been alkalized (look for words to the effect of “made with cocoa processed with alkali”), European companies are NOT required to say not he label whether the cacao or chocolate has been alkalized (even though in most cases it is).
If you want to make sure your chocolate ins’t alkalized buy only U.S. made chocolate which doesn’t mention alkalization or alkali on the package. Generally it’s small craft chocolate makers who skip the alkalization process, since we always want to highlight the natural flavors of our fine flavor cacao beans, and also wan too maximize the health benefits.
In our case we not only make our chocolate from the bean, we also press our own cocoa butter and cacao powder – so you can always be sure what you’re getting is 100% non-alkalized cacao and chocolate!
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