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Saturday, December 6, 2008
Cocao Bean: Do You Know Chocolate Fantasies Like Gourmet Truffles Come From The Cocao Bean
Have you ever sunk your teeth into the delicious mouth watering sensation of a gourmet truffle? Speaking of the things chocolate fantasies are made of.
* So rich!
* So creamy!
* So cocao.
With each savory bite you know you must be eating something deliriously naughty. However, the truth is your not!
Don't get me wrong. With the addition of items like milk and sugars that are bad for you, many of these little treats are not your friends.
However, the chocolate part, the cocao part is actually a bean. Yes, that's right. Chocolate comes from the cocao bean when in and of itself is not bad for our bodies to consume. What makes the truffles "sinful" is not the chocolate but rather what people put with the chocolate that is supposed to make it taste so good.
The moral to this story is that the way cocao is prepared is what makes it a hazard to your health. There is one company that actually cold presses cocao allowing it to retain many of its healthful properties. They also refuse to add the sugars and milk ingredients that result in this bean no longer being considered of tremendous nutritional value.
Cocao beans and coco beans are actually different types of beans. Cocao is the fruit of cocao trees that are normally found in areas like Mexico, Venezuela and Ecuador. The yellow, green or violet pod of cocao beans are pulled from the trunk of a cocao tree, then the beans are scooped out. After the beans are fermented and dried, they are cleaned, roasted and hulled. The shells of the bean are removed and the remaining contents, or “nibs,” are blended like coffee beans to produce different colors and flavors. Nibs are then ground until the cocao butter is released. Heat from the grinding process causes this mixture of cocao butter and finely ground nibs to melt and form a free-flowing substance known as chocolate liquor. From there, different varieties of chocolate are produced. -- http://www.travellady.com/Issues/October05/1903CocaoBean.htm
By understanding more about the healthy nutritional value of the cocao bean we can enjoy the chocolate fantasies of gourmet truffles as long as we make sure they are made of the right ingredients for our bodies.
