Is Cacao toxic?

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Permalink Reply by bueller on February 8, 2008 at 2:55pm

Bev Hills. Welcome!!

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Permalink Reply by HiHoRosie on February 7, 2008 at 11:45pm

I don't know if it's toxic or not but my husband has strong reactions to cacao powder (fast heart) but does perfectly fine with cacao nibs. Slow release of magnesium or proteins or something (I actually don't know what I'm talking about)??? Not sure but now we try to be careful with the chocolate. It is hard for me to resist though! ;)

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Permalink Reply by MelissaDavison: RawFoodRenegade on February 8, 2008 at 12:23am

when comcuming a food or raw product..no matter how popular or cutting edge it may be....if it makes you feel like crap...listen to your body!!
I completly agree with you and the articles posted and researched by John of Living foods .com
I know there are many products making the curcuit of raw foods (cacao included) that are not good for your body if eaten in the quantities suggested. .
I know for me, I feel terrible when I eat large amounts of cacao and agave ...especially mixed together..yikes.
I heard that the actual nutritional "magically" properties of cacao are there and available ONLY if eaten whole with the tender white fruit and bean. this needs further research...

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Permalink Reply by Alexandra on February 8, 2008 at 1:09am

agave...blahh

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Permalink Reply by LilyLoo on February 9, 2008 at 11:02am

whats wrong with agave nectar? too sweet? or something else i should know about? :)

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Permalink Reply by brian on February 22, 2008 at 1:32am

There might be. John Kohler wrote another article about agave nectar "The Truth About Agave Syrup". It was written awhile ago and the story is not complete. If you read the article, as a note, not all agave nectars are the same and not all fructose functions the same way in the body as the writing infers.

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Permalink Reply by RawTruth on February 22, 2008 at 3:18am

There's valid questions about whether it's raw or not. So far I've not found a way that it can be. Regardless, I think the question -- and why some people have reactions -- with both cacao and agave is that they're processed and not whole foods.

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Permalink Reply by RawTruth on March 20, 2008 at 1:06am

What makes a "good" plant? Isn't agave nectar made by processing the plant and then distilling the "juice"?

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Permalink Reply by Uti on March 20, 2008 at 2:55pm

That would make it Tequila lol!

Blue Agave is notable for its quality. The nectar can be kept raw by not overheating it. The traditional method is to pour the nectar into large flat vessels raised over low burning fires to evaporate the water off until it reaches a syrupy consistency.

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Permalink Reply by Uti on March 20, 2008 at 4:19pm

Hey Mate,
I had my day pursuing fine Blue Agave tequilas. I had friends who worked in Mexico at the time who would shop for me and bring a few bottles of the good stuff home. I also lived in the Mission District of San Francisco at the time which was predominately Latin American, so sniffing out sources was easy.

My understanding of the process says you have to heat the nectar warmer than the surrounding air for the moisture to evaporate out of it at a practical rate. Remember it comes from a country that runs on low tec in a lot of aspects.

I have three sources of truly raw agave syrup I can buy locally. The bottom line though is I don't use it very often so a pint last me most of the year.

Permalink Reply by brian on February 22, 2008 at 1:23am

Nutritionally, i think that fresh cacao seeds with the fruit is more complete and the polyphenol content would be much greater. However, once the seeds are sun dried other subtle properties become present that give it the exquisite and unique flavor profile. Fresh cacao even with the sweet fruit states bitter, astringent, and bland. High quality sun dried cacao can taste like roses, oranges, strawberries, lemon, blackberries, on and on. There is something special about good variety cacao seeds after they have been dried properly in the sun, that may never be able to be measured by nutrition science.

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Permalink Reply by jules on March 21, 2008 at 2:28pm

uti, i don't know alot about tequila, probely as when ever i got near it i was fast in the worst mess any alcohol ever got me apart from mescal, it's good that the u.k. is along way from the source , if it wasn't the world would be in more a mess than it is, and that saying something

thanks so much for that, i think i will experiment a bit on taking water content out, i dont know whether it will be as helthy, may be it has been done as much as needed, i have only had concern as some of the chocolate makers around me say the water in it makes the chocolate congeal, so it would be good to have a sweetener that has know water, mapel surope is not as comon in the u.k. as u.s. but i have been told one can get raw mapel sristols. how true i dont know.

i love agave ,but i dont eat much of it my self, my hart dosnt draw us together, to much, i know im getting, very speshal agave, it's just not as right for me as other things, having said that, i think that hole thing about whether something is good for one, is complicated, partly the person them self and partly the strain grown and the way is grown and harvested and partly the modern pollution that goes on inbetween harvest and eating, it get mine in plastice bottles, plastic leacks pollamers for months befor stopping. an egsample of that is the golden incan berrys i import, they come in half pound polly bags, a frend of mine hada bag off me before i could rebag them into nutralised bags. he phoned me up yesterday telling me when he opened the bag he could smell the plastic fumes over the smell of the incan berrys, he's sencative but he's right,they are all out of those bags and clencing as i right. on top of that by the time they've crossed the world they are possative on an ionic level, the same as if they had been sitting on a shop shelf for a week under lighting, or cooling sistams. i dont know how a where people are in the states about pollution like this. in the u.k. few people are only just waking up to it slowly, where as in germany or switsaland they are very a where in comparrison.i work with tecnolagy for cleaning up pollution, our bodys are much more a where than our heads. lovejules

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