About Chocolate

There are some pretty mixed opinions out there on chocolate which is being marketed as “raw”. Most raw chocolate enthusiasts are looking for a chocolate that has higher levels of antioxidants / flavanols / polyphenols. Essentially the stuff that is really good for you, and is reported to have very high levels in dark chocolate.

When given a sweet chocolate, we almost instinctively devour it quickly. Some untamed part of our psyche seems to surface, the body on hearing that there is sugar in the vicinity seems to lose itself in a thirst for satisfaction. If we do this with an expensive chocolate, we will have devoured it before it has even had a chance to show us what it is capable of.

To make fine flavour chocolate, the processing of cacao is vastly different to the processes undergone when making low quality chocolate. Encouraging farmers to grow the right kind of cacao under the conditions preferable for fine flavour, takes financial incentive. A farmer will typically take the option that pays best.

The deeper we dig into the complex world of cacao terminology, the more confusion we are uncovering. There is a wide vocabulary of words at our disposal, and it appears we are free to use them as we see fit, giving them the associations that suit us best depending on our individual endeavour, as there is no regulatory body to check what is going on.