Forum Activity for @Brad Churchill

RW... Your statementjust abovetypifies how stupid people can be. "I don't care if it will kill me. I want to know if it's healthier!"

My reply: "Hey retard! Being dead IS NOT HEALTHY!"

Usually when people ask me (and I get asked at least once a week), my answer is simple: "Would you go to the same country and drink the water right out of the pump?". They answer "Absolutely not!", and I reply "Then why the hell would you pick something up off the ground of the same country and eat it without cooking it first?"

Geesh....

Brad

i buy raw beans at the farm, do all the post harvest processing, and i've made chocolate in a small factory, although i'm mostly a bean guy. i really doubt that any product that tastes like chocolate goes all the way through the process without going well over the raw limit wherever temp they put that limit.

I don't understand, they are more concerned with probably fictitious health benefits then they are about eating poison?

Actually I'm not sure what the originator of this thread was asking or suggesting. Usually when people ask me about raw chocolate they are not concerned about the potential microbiological health hazard, but rather are interested in the possible health benefits one might get from eating a less processed food item.

No one's suggesting it's not possible to physically make a product with raw agricultural materials; only that it's a terrible, terrible idea from a food safety perspective. One that once it's officially looked at through a regulatory lens, will be quickly legislated into illegality. Having been part of the preliminary discussions that have already occurred w/in the FDA, I can tell you that it's on the radar, but not prioritized.

Bottom line - just don't do it. It's foolish. If you choose to expose yourself to the risk, do so knowing what that risk is; under no circumstance should you offer it for sale to the consuming public who has an expectation of food safety, and has exhibited very little willingness to educate themselves.

Yes, you can make bars without roasting the beans. You just don't get a lot of the flavors (most?). Tempering depends on having enough cacao butter, and if it's a raw liquor, it has plenty of butter. Mixing raw chocolate with regular chocolate would be interesting because you could cut down on some of the bitterness of the chocolate, although I imagine that the acidity (organic acids) would increase a bit. Don't know about how healthy it would be though.

One comment about Clay's discussion above, I have measured the temperature of beans drying in the sun (in Costa Rica) and have found that the temperature of the surface of the beans (not the ambient temperature) often get above 120 degrees F, and sometimes get as high as 130. Does that mean that, after drying, they are already roasted? Are they mildly roasted? The beans in the farms here usually take at least a week to dry, preferably a little longer. If it happens to be a sunny week, that means that the beans are exposed to temperatures of 120 degrees F for 7 days.

Kat:

As Nat says, this is a topic that has been discussed - a lot - here on TheChocolateLife.

Sebastian also rightly points out some very important aspects of the debate, one of which is the question of what does "raw" mean (i.e., what is the max temp), and other is the question of safety.

Like many things, the answers to your questions are much more complicated than they appear to be on the surface.

What is Meant by Raw?

Raw means uncooked. The raw food "movement" has put a ceiling on the maximum temperature that food can be exposed to before being considered cooked. Unfortunately, there is no universal agreement on what that maximum temperature is. Some people say it's 40C (about 104-105F) others say 115F (about 46C) and others say 118F (47.7777C).

Whatever the temperature is, there is, in fact, no scientific proof to support the basic claim that food enzymes are denatured and are no longer effective above any of these temperatures. I quote from TheRawChocolateCompany.com (referenced in a comment on your other post), "All fresh vegetable/plant foods contain enzymes that aid digestion. Heating can degrade many of these enzymes, increasing the strain on the body's own enzyme production.Eating food with reduced enzymes makes digestion more difficult. This in turn can contribute to toxicity in the body, excess consumption of food, and ultimately obesity and chronic disease."

These ideas were first proposed by Ed Howell in his book, "The Theory of Enzyme Nutrition." To the best of my knowledge, there have been no credible, independent, scientific studies that validate these claims. (Gabriel Cousens is not independent, and in many quarters is not considered credible, so you can't cite his "research.")

In fact, there is a large body of evidence to suggest that many beneficial enzymes in food do, in fact, survive at much higher temperatures than 118F and do so for long periods of time, especially in aqueous environments.

The Burden of Proof

The raw food community has been making these claims for a long time. When pressed, the response is generally, "Prove us wrong." This is unscientific - the proper way to respond is to buck up and do (i.e., pay for) the independent research to prove what you are claiming.

Cooking is Inherently a Bad Thing

While it is true that prolonged exposure to heat can degrade some nutrients in food, it is also the case that cooking can make the nutrients in some food more bio-available (e.g., broccoli). It is also the case that cooking does, in many cases, create valuable nutrients that do not exist in a food in its raw state. For example, the antioxidants found in coffee are found only in roasted coffee; the process of roasting creates valuable nutrients in this case and, I suspect, in many others.

Know Your Physics

Cooking is about contact time and how heat is applied, not just about getting something to a particular temperature. It is preposterous to believe that all of the enzymes in a dried cocoa bean (assuming there were any in the first place, which there probably aren't) were denatured instantly the moment the exterior of the bean was exposed to a temperature above 118F. I can drop 35kg of beans into a half-bag coffee roaster set at 350F and the temperature will immediately drop to below 100F and take quite some time to recover to 250F. Does the fact that the beans are exposed to 350F for a fraction of a second as the temperature in the roaster is quenched by the mass of the beans mean the beans are cooked?

No, it doesn't. It will take many minutes for the roaster temp to rise above 118F and when it does, at least for a short while, evaporative cooling from moisture leaving the bean will keep the temperature of the surface of the bean well below 118F. How do I know this? I've actually measured it.

So - at what point are the beans considered "cooked?" The moment the outer surface is exposed to temps above 118F? When .02% of the mass of the bean reaches 118F? 0.2%? 2%?

Food Safety

There are several ways to do a "kill step" in chocolate that won't "violate" the chocolate by cooking it. One is to soak the cocoa beans in hydrogen peroxide. This is a common and accepted practice in the organic world and it has been used, to some extent, in the raw chocolate world.

Another way to perform the kill step is to expose the beans to very hot, very humid air for a short period of time. You have to remember that cocoa beans are covered with a paper-like shell. It actually takes a while for the heat of the roaster to completely penetrate the shell and start to raise the surface temperature of the bean inside past 118F. Long enough, in fact, to perform a kill step - if the humidity is high enough.

On the Farm

Have you ever been on a cacao farm where the farmer does his own fermentation and drying?

Fermentation of the pulp surrounding cacao seeds can easily reach temperatures of 122F to 125F. However, the beans are in an aqueous environment which has been shown to reduce the denaturing of enzymes due to heat. It is possible to do a full fermentation where the temp does not go above 118F, but the pile needs to be very closely monitored with thermometers. I don't know anyone who does this in practice.

Anyone who has been on a cacao farm also knows that the temperature of a drying pad can easily reach 140F during the heat of the day. Beans lying in the sun for hours at a time are heated through to temps that easily exceed 125F - for hours and days at a time. It is possible to dry the beans at much lower temperatures? Of course, but it requires more time and more energy to do so and there is always the risk of the beans molding, mildewing, or rotting - which is why high heat is used in the first place.

No raw foodist or raw chocolate company - that I am aware of - has ever done a comparative study of the nutritional profile of seeds straight from the pod, seeds after each stage of fermentation, beans after drying, and then the beans after roasting. There is no baseline research to prove the claims. It is all apocryphal. There is no hard data, only assumptions.

That Said ...

There is a lot to say for a raw-ish diet that consists of a high proportion of foods that are minimally processed. Many raw foodists are also vegetarian or vegan, and most prefer to purchase organic foods. All these things are hallmarks of a good diet - if not taken to extremes (e.g., fruitarian).

The point is, unless you can point to research to back up the claim of 118F or lower, and are willing to obsessively supervise all steps in the production chain from the farm to tempering (has anyone measured the instantaneous sheer temperature under the grinding stone of a CocoaTown ECGC65? It could easily be over 118F), then you have to give up the notion of a definition of raw that is tied to the maximum temperature of 118F. Believe it or not, setting the bar (for cocoa and chocolate) at 125F is a lot more sane. There are a number of techniques that can be used to develop Maillard reaction browning and flavor development at this low temperature; you just can't get caramelization flavors which are the result of pyrolysis at much higher temperatures.

In my opinion, a more process-oriented definition for "raw" chocolate needs to be developed, not adherence to a single temperature that has never been proven to apply.

1) W/o having a universal definition of what 'raw' is, it's a moving target

2) I find it implausible that anyone claiming to make raw chocolate is actually doing so. at best they likely don't know what they're doing, at worst they're intentionally misleading their consumer

3) Almost no matter what your definition of raw is, it represents a huge. huge. huge. huge. safety risk from a microbiological standpoint. Unless your irradiate. Which i'm almost equally positive no one's doing. Killing your customers has been scientifically proven to be a terrible business model.

Thank you for your response Nat. I did a search, and did not get a direct answer, though I may not have been looking in the right way. Also, I ask people's thoughts on this, if they do not want to respond, they do not have to, therefore not repeating themselves. Sorry if it offended you in some way, I am just wanting some thoughts on this topic.

Kat,

Please read the many posts on this exact topic here before askingpeople to repeat their responses.

Chocolate community...what are your opinions on companies that claim they used raw chocolate in their bars? I have been hearing varied things on this topic. Does anyone know for certain if fermented beans can be used in bars without being roasted? Thank you!

i think that word 'raw' just sounds too magical for people and calling some product 'raw' like 'raw chocolate' they want to make the product more 'magical' that it already is. what they probably really mean with 'raw' is 'natural'. meaning that the product or chocolate is pure and clean natural product.

if you make bread you dont eat raw dough and also you dont eat raw potato...that's because it's unpleasant and not healthy the same goes with chocolate.

it seems like some of you guys have gotten into this argument before and are sounding defensive about whether or not chocolate is healthy. just to be clear, I want to say that my experience is that chocolate which is made from organic, shade-grown beans, fermented & dried, lightly roasted & peeled or winnowed, and ground with stones (not necessarily mechanically) is the healthy kind. maybe sweetened with a little bit of honey or maple or similar whole food sweetener. otherwise i agree with you and think that it is just candy.

What is that gob of yellow slimey mass they lipo out of peoples bodies? Is that fat? No. It is blocking the lymphatic system from drainage, it is not stored in lymph nodes. I recommend you read Parasite Rex and humble yourself. It seems you are pretty gullible to mainstream opinions. The main point anyhow was that you called chocolate unhealthy, and I was only correcting you by saying that the way it is modernly prepared by most of you folks is unhealthy - mass produced beans and refined white sugar. Wild growing, ground with stones, honey sweetened cacao beverages, xocolatl, is healthful. There is a reason why the emperor Moctezuma II of the entire Aztec empire kept his storehouses stocked with cacao beans when they could have easily been stocked with gold! I recommend you read some books about cacao and it's history so you can know a little bit about the plant you make your living from. Peace.

Washed and dried with what? Water? Is the water purified? Is the handling facility purified/sanitized?

Contamination of cocoa is the result of cross contamination from other sources - sources such as contaminated water, exposure to animals, contaminated storage facilities, and many others. From what I understand, the fermentation of cocoa does not cultivate salmonella or ecoli.

I'm still not convinced that it's safe.

Jonathan...

Who are you trying to fool, you or the reader?

Ask any surgeon who's had to operate on a grossly obese person. They aren't cutting through huge lymph nodes! They are cutting through 100's of lbs of FAT.

As an FYI, a person doesn't lose fat cells when they lose weight. We are all born with the same amount of fat cells we die with. The only difference is the amount of fat STORED in those cells which changes as we gain or lose weight. The only way we die with less fat cells, is if they are CUT out of us - such as is the case with lyposuction.. The only place the fat cells can't be cut out of us are in our livers.

Please see my April 22nd post (above). You're definitely in the "gullible" group where I and many others are left simply shaking our heads.

Brad

Sugar in whole food form, yes. Although even then, it is important to realize that most of the fruits and even vegetables like carrots and beets which are commonly available have been extensively bred for increasing sugar content. The amount of sugar the average person takes in daily, be it in the form of highly processed foods or supermarket fruit, is far beyond what our body's design is naturally intended for. Berries are the best form of sugar.

When someone is 400lbs, there is only a think layer of actual "fat" beneath their skin. Your body does not need to store that amount of excess for later use. I agree that real and healthy fat is simply stored excess calories, but obesity is largely a buildup of toxic material in the lymphatic system. This is just an opinion though, not all healthe xperts agree. Parasite Rex is a good read on the subject. Learn about the creepie crawlers that live inside you.

I only recently heard my first explanation of how raw chocolate is made without posing contamination risks that actually seemed "logical/possible". It seems that the raw community(at least in Israel) prefer unfermented, dehydrated cacao.

The beans are harvested/ washed and dried immediately- at least that is the claim. I've tasted Sanchez cacao from DR that wasn't fermented- didn't care for it but was told its used for butter. They get packaged in the country and then shipped. I guess that without fermentation, it's possible to hygenically possible to process, as now there are several manufacturers offering (I've seen one in Peru, and Costa Rica).

I would like to know what if any difference there is nutritionally.

Slight modifications: the bitterness is largely due to the flavanol content, not minerals. Also, singling out any single nutrient as 'good' or 'bad' is an oversimplification. Much like a healthy 401k, your body requires a balanced portfolio of nutrients, including sugar. Consuming more calories than you burn is what lays down fat. Fat is simply excess calories that are stored for later use - not mycotic organisms.

Raw chocolate is not more healthy, but cacao is definitely a healthy food if it is consumed moderately and with very minimal sugar. Especially if it is not cane sugar and the cacao is organically grown. I say the health factor of chocolate is related to the cacao content, not whether it has been roasted. Personally I'm inclined to say roasted is healthier, actually, except for eating the beans fresh out of the pod with the pulp. Cacao is a bitter food in it's natural state, and bitterness in nature is generally an indicator of mineral concentration. Chocolate was always consdered a "medicinal" food by the people who originally cultivated and consumed it for over 5000 years in drink form. Of course they usually consumed it bitter, only occasionally adding honey to sweeten, and mixing it with spices and herbs which have a stimulating effect on digestion and circulation.

By the way, fat is not bad for you, it is essential for protecting your cells and for nourishing your brain, plus lubricating your joints, rebuidling tissue especially in the liver, lining your gastrointestinal tract. Cacao butter is one of the healthiest and most stable fats on the planet. Sugar is the danger when it comes to health, it creates and feeds systemic infections that lead to inflammation and your body's slow decomposition from the inside out. Sugar is what makes you "fat"...well that and overeating, stress, lethargy, combining several food groups in one meal, environmental toxins and plasticizers in food, alcohol, lots of stuff. What people consider "fat" on the body is not actually fat at all, it is lymphatic blockage and build-up of toxic matter and yeast/mold/fungus/parasites in your body.

Just had to say that because I love chocolate and consider it one of the earth's most potent and powerful plants, of course as with any plant it must be grown and treated with respect not just in some massive full sun plantation being dumped with chemicals all the time. Imagine you were trying to raise a child to be strong and healthy and you just left him out in the tropical sunshine and bathed him in chemicals all day. Not gonna work.

Peter;

"Exploited" is a good word to use.

People jump on the "enzyme" and "anti-oxidant" bandwagon, and religiously wave their "raw healthy chocolate" flags, but forget to mention that their "healthy" chocolate SUPER FOOD is still about 70% fat and sugar!!

Call my cynical, but some people are so gullible I have to just sit there and shake my head....

Let's face it people. Chocolate is a CONFECTION, not a super food, or health food, or a magical elixer that will clear your arteries and let you live to 120 years old.

Tell your customers to stop trying to justify their vice, treat it for what it is - a CONFECTION - and live a more balanced life. You'll gain more respect from them than trying to feed them a line of crap that raw chocolate is some magical elixer that will cure your ails!

Brad

There exists a raw food movement that believes that cooking food kills enzymes that are necessary to protect our digestive systems, etc.

Combine this outlook with the belief that the less processed our chocolate is the healthier it is for us.

So, there is a market niche that is being exploited to that end.

Peter

Yes Sebastian, it is not a belief for me. It is more about wanting to create a unique product. I believe the "whys" of the requests come from misleading of the companies selling "raw chocolate". They claim that it has more health benefits and is superior to other chocolate on the market. I am understanding that this is just not true, and that it is a marketing ploy. I went to my supplier and asked them to show me where it is just fermented beans being used, and how they are in fact considering it "raw". They showed me nothing-proof to me! Thank you again!

Quote of the month: "Why? Is there a belief that life is just too long?"

Thanks Kit - I know i say things tongue in cheek sometimes, the intent isn't to be jarring. I've only ever seen one 'raw' chocolate being sold (in NYC), so i'm left with the impression there's not a huge demand for it, but then it's hard to square that with all the requests. Would love to hear more about they 'whys' of the requests that come in and what is driving them. Your request appears to be driven more out of a desire to somehow differentiate the product, and not necessarily demand or belief based i think..

Sebastion..this is a good question. And now, being exposed to this forum I am asking myself the same questions. I am a business woman. I love chocolate. I started making chocolate when I owned a store, and decided to continue the process, though, quite honestly I do not know a lot about it, so I am learning. I am wondering if it is marketed this way (including how it is marketed to me to buy in bulk) as something unique and unlike any other chocolate out there. I am appreciating the insight, experience and wisdom this forum has around this topic. It is a bit jarring for me, but I am listening. Thank you.

I'd love to understand what the draw is behind the 'raw chocolate' movement. Every 2 months or so for years a handful of the exact same questions pop up. While i'm not going to spend any more time answering them again, i do wonder why the question arises. Is there a movement, in general, of low heat processed foods? Why? Is there a belief that life is just too long?

Or is it specific to cocoa? If so, why? What's the attraction/belief centered around? I can't seem to parse that out of any of the questions...

Little help?

I am in complete agreement with Brad here. Unless the process of making chocolate starting from the tree (what is known in the industry as tree-to-bar chocolate) is very tightly controlled from the beginning through the end you will seriously risk contamination. And even then you still might have problems. I've spoken with several chocolate makers on Hawaii and they pulled the use of or selling the fermented but unroasted cacao beans - even with their own stringent controls due to the possible contamination. Remember, the first stages of processing cacao beans happens in the tropics where there is always something in the air and the possibility of contamination. To reduce this possibility, during the ferment having high temperatures - a constant 120f and higher for several days will kill most pathogens. But, you've still got the drying process and the shipping process - contamination can happen (hot tropics).

If you choose to try and make chocolate from these fermented beans you still need to winnow and grind them to a fine particulate matter - the grinding produces heat, which you want in any case as this facilitates the cocoa butter melt which will expedite this.

And Brad is also right that cocoa powder is produced by hydraulic press - this also produces heat.

There are a couple of companies who do not chemically deodorize their cocoa butter, or they use a steam process but they are small companies and as far as I know, don't sell the cocoa butter.

I will say that the fermentation begins the process of producing the compounds that produce the chocolate flavor, this continues with the drying. Roasting is a big part of producing flavors which continues through the grinding and conching. All these steps contribute to a full rounded chocolate flavor. Steps can be omitted but only to the detriment of the final flavor.

How are you planning on grinding the cocoa nibs?

Pixie;

If you're making chocolate with cocoa powder, it's not raw chocolate. Most cocoa powder is a by-product of making cocoa butter, and is created by roasting and crushing the cocoa beans, then putting them through intense pressure to "press" out the butter.

Most cocoa powder is also alkalized using a chemical called Potassium Carbonate.

Cocoa powder is literally the farthest from "raw" that a person can get in the industry, as it's the most heavily processed.

Having said that, you might want to revisit your use of the word "raw". Simply put: what you make isn't raw.

Brad

Kia ora Kat,

I just came accross your letter in the forum and was wondering how you got on with your business. I also make raw choc in Nz (using butter and powder) but in the process of changing from bean to bar. Did you do further reshearch on the risk of using 'unroasted' beans? Any feedback would be most appriated..........love pixie

Without any heat application, the fermenting bean pile will exceed 114F (temp taken from middle of pile) on its own from the microbial activities.

Simply put, i don't believe it. They may not be exposing it to those temperatures (however, it's the temperature of a loading truck, so even then...) - it doesn't mean someone else isn't, and how in the world would they know. I'm a huge skeptic.

http://www.therawchocolatecompany.com/

This site claims all of their chocolate is raw and uncooked at that their chocolate never reaches temps above 114F.

So are they just using some type of agent to wash/clean their cacao before they make their chocolate? or are they selling chocolate death?

99.99% of chocolate companies in the world don't make chocolate. They simply resell something that they buy. It's simply misinformation that they have been provided and trust. Somebody lied to the reseller. For example, a spice shop in my neighborhood had "raw" nibs for sale. I took them 4 different varieties of REAL unroasted nibs, and as a result, they pulled the "raw" nibs off the shelf. Why? because the nibs they were told were raw, were actually lightly roasted and had a very delicate, mild chocolate flavour - similar to the mild chocolate flavour I can create in my shop when I mildly roast cocoa too.

Think about this for a second: If the FDA and the CFIA stipulate the cocoa is a 100% guaranteed contaminated commodity, do you actually think they would allow someone to sell it as a food product in it's raw state without going through some type of heat sterilization process first??? (which incidentally nullifies any "raw" claims they should be able to make).

Brad

Thank you! So what is the deal with chocolate companies that say they are making raw chocolate?

I agree with Brad and i can tell you that after have tasted some raw cocoa beans out of excitement for our first shipment, i had to spend 2 weeks in bed with high fever, vomit, stomach problem and 2 kind of antibiotic. Lost 6 kg and the doctor wasn't sure what caused!

So roast the beans! you will gain on flavor and uniqueness of your own chocolate.

Thank you for your response Brad.

Cocoa beans don't taste like chocolate until they are roasted. Before then, they are very acidic and unpleasant.

On top of that, if you make chocolate with raw cocoa beans, you are playing russian roulette with the chances of killing someone from ecoli or salmonella. Remember: Cocoa beans are an agricultural product fermented and driedon the ground of a third world country. If you wouldn't drink the water from the tap there, why on earth would you eat something right off the ground?

Cheers

Brad

And also, is it ok to just use the fermented bean (without it being roasted)-I assume it is a special process the bean undergoes?

Hello chocolate community. I am going to be purchasing bulk fermented cacao beans for my chocolate business. I have been buying the butter and powder separate, but it is not cost effective as my company grows. If I were to buy the fermented bean what exactly would I need for equipment? I would not be roasting them, we are selling "raw" chocolate- what I know is really fermented chocolate. Thank you for any advice here!

We temper the chocolate, pour into molds, and let harden. I am needing to know what equipment is needed for the bean-bar process.