Do Your Vitamins Taste Like Chocolate?

A recent study by Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School indicated cearly that natural cocoa has very high levels of epicatechin. The health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so powerful that it may rival penicillin and anesthesia in terms of importance to public health. Dr. Hollenberg stated that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin.

Many commercial chocolates go through a process called dutching. This involves soaking the nib or the cocoa mass in potassium or sodium carbonate. Commercial chocolate companies also remove the flavanols like epicatechin from their cocoa because of their bitter taste. Next they add loads of processed sugars, preservatives and other fillers often reducing the actual cocoa content to less than 15 per cent per cocoa drink mix.

Are you drinking hot sugar water?
This means when you purchase those handy hot chocolate packets you are really drinking mostly hot sugar with artificial chocolate flavor. No wonder chocolate has gotten such a bad reputation for being unhealthy. It is not the cocoa that is unhealthy; it is the added chemicals, milk solids and sugar that has made chocolate a bad food. In reality, naturally sweetened, pure organic cocoa is a great addition to your daily diet. Look for a hot cocoa that uses a high percentage of cocoa powder and also adds cordyceps and ganoderma for boosting your immune system.