Understanding Cocoa
Chocolate as a health food has been big news lately. First came the news that it prevents wrinkles, then that it can reduce the risk of cancer, and finally that chocolate keeps your blood pressure down. But before you rush into a chocolate feeding frenzy in the interest of good health, you should know the details about what you’re eating.
This is where the Chocolate Manufacturer’s Association (CMA) can help. They have come out with a document called Making Sense of % Cacao that includes definitions of many of the terms found on chocolate packaging. You can read the entire document here, but here are the highlights.
% cacao is basically the percentage of ingredients found in the chocolate product that come from the cacao bean. This includes chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, and cocoa powder. A higher percentage will have a stronger chocolate flavour while a lower percentage will have a milder chocolate flavour. And there’s more to it. A higher percentage means there is less sugar added, so the chocolate product will taste more bitter and less sweet. The flavanol content, which is where a lot of the health benefits come from, is not always tied in to the percentage of cocao.
So now that you know, feel free to head off to that chocolate feeding frenzy.
Tags: %-cocoa, blood-pressure, cacao-bean, CMA, flavanol, health-food, lower-blood-pressure, prevent-wrinklesRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Chocolate Products, Chocolate Trivia, Health and Chocolate
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