Activated Almond & Purple Corn Dark Chocolate - Raw Organic

What is it?

A lot of people ask us, what is purple corn and how did it end up in a chocolate bar?

Purple corn is an iconic heirloom variety of maize from Peru. We use purple corn extract in this chocolate bar. The extract is the powder left when all the moisture is evaporated out of the pulp of the corn cob - all the purple antioxidants are highly concentrated in the cob of the purple corn. It is the most purple natural product on the planet and therefore loaded with the anthocyanin antioxidants. It has a slightly bitter malty whisky flavour that blends beautifully with the chocolate. When you taste it, the hint of a liqueur flavour that comes through is from the purple corn extract.

We are also often asked, what are activated almonds?

They are raw organic almonds that are soaked for 12 hours to deactivate the enzyme inhibitors in them (raw nuts are hard to digest because of the enzyme inhibitors in them soaking them releases these inhibitors making them much easier to digest). Then we dehydrate them at 40ºC for 24 hours to make them crunchy again (roasting nuts kills a lot of their nutrient value). So essentially activating the nuts allows us to benefit fully from the nutrients they have to offer. The nuts are also much plumper and more satisfying.

How it's used

Eat a square or two for a delicious, energising snack. Even better when shared with someone you love!

How it's processed

First of all, the cacao pods are harvested from the trees and cracked open. The beans are then taken out and fermented. The level of fermentation affects the flavour; we do a low fermentation of about 45 degrees C, as otherwise the temperatures can get quite high, which affects the structure of the nutrients. The main thing that Loving Earth does differently to other chocolate makers is that we don't roast the raw cacao beans before we process them. The standard procedure in the chocolate industry is to roast the raw cacao, which helps bring out the flavour. It removes a lot of the microbiological contamination they might contain, but it also removes some of the valuable antioxidants contained within. What we do instead is wash them with a citric-based organic disinfectant. Afterwards, they're dried in large commercial dehydrators, at controlled temperatures, before being winnowed into nibs, which basically means taking the skin off them. Then we grind them into liquor, and finally we press them into powder and butter.

Basically, we get five products from this process. We get raw cacao beans, and because we've disinfected and washed them you can eat them - raw! We get raw cacao nibs, which are the beans without the skin. We get raw cacao liquor, which is the nibs ground into a paste. Then when we take the the liquor and put it into a very high-pressure press, which presses all the fat and butter out of it. So the end product is the raw cacao butter and then this hard cake that's milled into raw cacao powder. 1kg of liquor is about 50% fat, so when you press the liquor you get about 40% cacao butter and 60% powder. The powder retains about 10% fat content after pressing, and all the antioxidants plus a lot of the nutrients are concentrated in that powder.

We buy and import these five products, which we use to make our raw chocolate from scratch. When indigenous communities such as our friends in Peru manage to add as much value as possible at the point of origin, not only do we support agricultural industry, but also the development of that community. We get the five basic materials we need to make our chocolate, and they earn more, allowing them to further develop infrastructure to process their cacao.

How it's packaged

Every Loving Earth chocolate bar comes to you in a plant-based inner wrapper to maximise freshness and extend shelf life. These wrappers are not made of plastic, so please recycle them!

The boxes which contain our wrapped chocolate bars are made from 80% recycled post-consumer cardboard and are printed with vegetable inks.

Nutrition Information

Serving Size 20g

Health Benefits

Antioxidants

Raw Cacao beans contain 10 grams of flavonol antioxidants per 100 grams, which is an incredible 10%. Research has also demonstrated that the antioxidants in cacao are highly stable and easily available to human metabolism. In the adjacent table you can see that our Loving Earth Raw Chocolate has more antioxidants than Goji Berries and Acai Berries. The ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) scale was developed by the United States Department of Agriculture to measure the ability of antioxidants to absorb free radicals, which normally cause cell and tissue damage. The higher the ORAC score, the higher the level of antioxidants present in the food.  Click here to see the Southern Cross University ORAC score for Loving Earth Dark Chocolate (this result shows per g).

Magnesium for the Heart and Brain

Raw cacao is the primary dietary source of magnesium, the most deficient mineral in western civilisation. Magnesium is the most important mineral for a healthy functioning heart. It also plays a key role in producing energy for the neurons in the brain from glucose. So when there is an abundance of magnesium the brain works with clarity and focus.

Mood elevators and Anti-depressants

Cacao is a great source of serotonin, dopamine, anandamide and phenylethylamine (PEA), four well-studied neurotransmitters, which are associated with feelings of well being and help alleviate depression. Both PEA and Anandamide (the bliss chemical) are found in abundance in the brains of happy people and are particularly released when we are feeling happy. Both of these nuerotransmitters are present in raw cacao in large enough quanitities to affect the brain and lift our moods. Cacao also contains monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO Inhibitors) that keep neurotransmitters in the bloodstream for longer without being broken down.

We have all experienced the positive feelings associated with eating chocolate, now we have access to pure raw unadulterated chocolate in the form of organic raw cacao. This is much more potent than the processed chocolate and doesn't have any sugar or dairy products blocking the positive effects of all the goodies in raw cacao. My experience is that eating 11 raw cacao beans is enough to experience a blissful sense of well being.