Raw chocolate has become popular, largely due to claims that it’s much healthier than the regular kind. This might make you reach for it, especially during holidays like Easter when you want to indulge without sacrificing your nutritious diet. But is the hype of raw chocolate nothing more than a food trend?
Raw chocolate is made by drying cacao beans at a low temperature and then either grinding them into a powder or breaking them into small pieces. Cocao powder is thought of as a superfood because it contains nutrients such as magnesium, protein, and calcium. Research has found that raw cacao powder has four times more antioxidant power than dark chocolate and 20 times more than blueberries!
So What’s the Catch?
There are some downsides to raw cacao which has made it quite controversial. These include:
Its caffeine content. Cacao beans contain caffeine, so you should be careful about consuming raw chocolate in large amounts. In fact, the amount of caffeine it contains is higher than what is found in processed, roasted chocolate.
It has been linked to hallucinogenic effects that are similar to LSD. Although you would have to consume 40 cacao beans to risk this, which seems like a lot, this amount is found in approximately seven milk chocolate bars.
If you have too much raw cacao, it can disrupt the body’s retention of calcium, so make sure you don’t have more than four heaped teaspoons of it a day.
It can sabotage your weight-loss efforts. Thinking raw chocolate is better than the regular kind can cause you to ruin your weight-loss efforts by eating more of it. In the same way that you don’t overeat regular chocolate, you should be careful with chocolate in its raw form because raw cacao is filled with a lot of cacao butter. In addition, when raw cacao is used to make chocolate, other ingredients are thrown in, such as sugar and milk, which dilute its health properties.
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