Raw chocolate-- what is it really?
Posted in: Make Mine Raw ... (Read-Only)
Sam:None of Nison's opinions appear to be his own. The are all references from other authors. Ty Stanley (for the book cited) and Jeremy Saffaron.You left out my favorite factoid from Saffaron's list: "No animal in nature will eat it unless tricked into it with milk or sugar." I am not sure what the 'it' is he is referring to, as Saffaron conveniently confuses cacao seeds, cocoa beans, 'raw' chocolate, and finished chocolate. But, does he even consider that it might be the bitterness of the seeds that keeps animals from eating cacao - and that the bitterness comes from the antioxidant compounds in the cacao seeds, and that bitterness is a common tactic employed by plants to keep from being eaten?You may remember that when we were in Ecuador in 2005 that some of us attended a shamanistic ritual that included consuming ayahuasca . (Jeez, the guy can't even spell it right.) The shaman said they added ground cacao to the ayahuasca to make it more palatable. I have done a fair amount of research on this subject since and have come to the conclusion that this (adding cacao to ayahuasca) is a relatively modern practice. For two reasons. The first is that historically, the use of cacao in South American cultures was limited to making beverages from cacao pulp, not eating the seeds. The second is that if you take a look at all the textiles produced in Ecuador (for example) by indigenous peoples, there are literally no examples of cacao in the agricultural iconography they weave into their textiles. If cacao were important to them - as it was to Mesoamerican cultures - I would expect to see images of cacao pods on ceramic objects, in woven items, etc.Similarly, I took a quick look in Google for "Jeremy Saffaron" (in quotes) to see if I could find anything about him. Five results. If there was anything to this guy there would be many more than five results. There are almost 70,000 for '"David Wolfe" raw' in Google.Cocoa beans are not the only nut/cereal monitored by the FDA for which there are "allowable" levels of insect parts and droppings. This is a reflection of the near impossibility of being 100% clean - getting to that level would increase the cost of food production astronomically. I also believe that as animals we have evolved to be able to tolerate rather large quantities of these kinds of substances and it it my belief that it is the absence of these substances, especially early in life, that results in lowered stimulation of the immune system which has led to an increase in many diseases, including asthma, some allergies, and etc.We also need to remember that in some cultures insects are a delicacy! And we're not just talking parts here we're talking the entire alimentary system. The aversion to insect parts is modern, western, and maybe peculiarly British, British Commonwealth, (where the first food purity laws since Kosher were enacted) and American. If you are hungry enough you will eat grasshoppers and even grubs (an Aussie Aboriginal treat for sure) and aren't locusts and honey a Biblical staple?Saffaron says, "At mega does of 40 plus beans it acts as a hallucinogen and can cause many effects attributed to LSD or Hashish." To this I can only say that smoking dried banana peels, nutmeg, and dozens of otherwise okay foods are thought to deliver the same results. 40 beans is a lot of beans and anybody who is stupid enough to try eat that many ... hey - maybe it could be a stunt on the TV show Jackass!Nison notes, "His (Saffaron's) personal study of him (it took 1.5 years of him eating it to see extreme negative effects) and his friends showed him clearly the negative effects of cacao." At what levels of intake? This is not science and, as everyone else here has noted, there is no credible supporting peer-reviewed research to back up these claims. It's all anecdotal and therefore suspect.As one person on David Wolfe's blog TheBestDayEver opines: Water can be toxic if drank [sic] too fast in too large a quantity. If you research anything enough online, you'll find somebody claiming it's totally toxic or hallucinatory, because everything, in some quantity, will be one of the two.
