What is the Difference Between Cacao and Cocoa?🍫

【What is the Difference Between Cacao and Cocoa?🍫】

f:id:piggyinkitchen:20200409150053j:plain

Have you thought of the differences between cacao and cocoa before?

Tastes like chocolate?
That powder in hot chocolate/cocoa?

There're so many chocolate products available in the world. And some of my vegan sweets are also containing cacao/cocoa powder frequently🍫.

It sounds very similar, but there're huge differences between them!
Today, what I want to share with you is:

The differences between cacao and cocoa
Health benefits
Healthy choice for the powders

HOW DO THEY DIFFER EACH OTHER?
Cacao and cocoa are both derived from the same plant which is cacao beans. But they are different in ternms of processing and nutrition.

CACAO
Cacao is basically the purest form that isn't processed by heat or that is less processed than cocoa.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CACAO

Nutrient-dense
High calories
Antioxidant effects

Cacao that isn't done heat processing too much contains more nutrient than cocoa since some micronutrients are susceptible to heat and are destroyed during the process.

NUTRIENTS IN CACAO

Fiber
Iron
Magnesium
Flavonoid
Healthy fat
Polyphenols
Calsium

Let me explain about "high calories". Some people may think that high calorie products are unhealthy and should be avoided, especially for those who are on diet or having food restrictions. But that is not always necessarily right! In this case, what I meant is that the reason why cacao is higher in calories than cocoa is "because most of nutrients in cacao arem't destroyed and are remaining inside". And this is amazing!!! It's now possible to increase intake of micronutrients which we hardly can obtain in a daily diet!!! Just remember that whole foods which aren't processed at all contain high calories respectively. But whole foods are something that we want to focus on due to high nutrient content!

※Of course, there're exceptions like fried foods which are high in calories, but low in nutrient value because their calories are mostly from unhealthy fats that has negative impacts on our body if excess consumed.

COCOA
On the other hand, cocoa is considered to be contained less nutrients than cacao due to its heat processing which destroys some micronutrients by heat. Despite cacao being less nutrients, it doesn't mean that it has no nutrients at all ☺ There're some benefits from taking cocoa powder.

CHARACTERISTICS OF COCOA

Antioxidant effects
Available in reasonable price
Low fat
High fiber

Since cocoa is rich in antioxidant, it helps prevent from aging, reparing tissues on skin and so on.

IS IT HEALTHY?
There're some health benefits you could expect to see.

１．Reduce stress ＝ improve mood
Cacao has a lot of neurotransmitters that makes you happy. It's suitable for someone who is mentally tired and need to regulare stress levels.

２．Boost energy
Magnesium in cacao may promote recovery from fatigue and help boost energy.

３．Lower risk of heart diseases
Antioxiddant effecs in cacao prevents lipoprotein from oxidation. This leads to lower LDL (bad cholesterol) and increase the number of HDL (good cholesterol).

４．Prevent skin issues
Antioxidants prevent cells from being destroyed and promote regenerating new cells.

５．Improve memories
６．Anti-aging
７．Promote metabolism

Although cacao/cacao products have health benefits for us, eating excessively will affect your body in an opposite way. So my suggestion is to eat up to one piece of Almond Butter Chocolate Cups that I posed a while ago, in a day. If you're not a morning person and hard to boost your enery, then have one chocolate in mornings, whereas someone who tends to get extremely tired in the middle of the day may want to eat one at arounf 3pm to recover from exhaustion and regain energy :)

WHAT IS THE HEALTHY CHOICE?
Frankly, I would say it's CACAO!
If posssible, RAW CACAO!

Both cacao and cocoa are considered one of the superfoods having nutrients and positive effects if moderatelly consumed, but cacao would be the best choice because it is the purest form and contains higher nutrients than cocoa. If available and possible, i would recommend you buying cacao with organic certification, faretrade and rainforest alliance certification.
My recommendations are organic traditions that sell raw cacao powder, and navitas organics cacao powder with organic and faretrade certified that we want to contribute to.

If you're buying cocoa powder instead of cacao powder, it's still okay! In that case, try to avoid any food additives or white sugar conatining in cocoa powder. The reason is because refined sugar may increase your blood sugar levels, lead you to be insuline resistance and increase your cravings for sweetness. Furthermore, you can adjust the sweetness by adding natural sweetners other than refined sugar. So you'd better buy cocoa powder with no additives and sugar.

I hope this helps you a lot to understand the concept and consider which one to choose from a bunch of cacao/cocoa products!😌🙏

If any questions come up to your mind, please don't hesitate to reach me out! I'm happy to hear your thoughts!

Thank you,

-piggyinkitchen-

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