Why does it feel so good? And why do we feel bad about it?
Few foods have the power to conjure the complex emotions that often surround chocolate. It’s commonly associated with feelings of love and pleasure. You’re probably reading this because of how much you love it, perhaps feeling anticipation at the thought of eating it. There are likely other voices in your head that lead to feelings of guilt. These voices may say it’s fattening or too decadent. You may even feel guilty after enjoying it, or maybe you’ve resolved to eschew your feelings of guilt and enjoy it without inhibition.
How can one plant pull on us so powerfully? How does it do this and what can we learn about ourselves in the process? From a biochemical perspective there are few foods that can match the molecular complexity of cacao. It contains the bliss molecule anandamide, your body’s equivalent to THC (the feel good chemical in cannabis). It also contains theobromine, a caffeine-like stimulant that gives clarity and energy to some (and can overstimulate others).
It provides a multitude of essential minerals and powerful antioxidants that protect your cells from the constant onslaught of living in an oxygen rich environment with daily doses of star radiation. These positive aspects of cacao make most of us feel good when we eat it or think about it. This leads to positive feelings of pleasure, joy, excitement and gratification.
The Flip Side Of Chocolate
On the flip side, there are negative aspects of cacao. Commercial chocolate is often diluted with waxy fillers and toxic chemicals. Did you know that almost all big brand chocolate is replacing some of the cocoa butter with tert-Butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) because they can sell the butter to the cosmetic industries? Yes, they are selling you something made up, not real, and lying to you about it.
Then, it is usually sweetened with refined sugar (cane, corn, agave or beet), which has been shown to cause inflammation (the root of most disease) and act like crack in our bodies. No really, crack cocaine. Refined sugar is addictive, disease causing and makes life physically and emotionally painful when we eat too much of it.
Furthermore, some people have sensitivities to certain aspects of cacao, like it’s stimulant properties and possible mold toxins. For this reason some people don’t feel good a while after they eat it.
Sometimes our thoughts and actions surrounding chocolate aren’t very nice to ourselves, which leads to negative feelings like guilt, anxiety, fear, doubt and self-sabotage.
The good news is, as we transform our lifestyle and mind-body relationship, we heal. A side benefit is that we become more tolerant of chocolate’s downsides, enjoy its benefits, and grow to tolerate it in appropriate doses for our body and nervous system. We just have to listen to how we feel in the moment.
Everything is a mixed bag. How do you spin your chocolate?
While the molecular makeup of cacao is fascinating, we as creatures on this planet are so much more than our biochemistry. We tend to try and categorize everything into good and bad piles. This food is either good or bad. This habit can be counterproductive. The fact is, every person reacts differently to every food.
It is more effective to look at our own relationship with food. Understanding our relationship with chocolate can lead us to a better understanding of how we relate to ourselves. Are our daily thoughts and actions predominately loving, creating vibrant health, balance and well being in ourselves? Do they lead to positive emotions that make us feel good and allow inspiration to come through? Or, are they some other shade of lack, fear or self-sabotage that could be getting in the way of creating the experiences and feelings we want?
The next time chocolate pops into your head, use it to take a look at how you’re feeling about it. Are your thoughts and actions predominately self-loving, or self-harming? Are you expecting chocolate to make you feel happy? Ultimately, no amount of chocolate can accomplish this. Instead, choose to be happy and inspired by choosing the thoughts and actions that make you feel happy and inspired.
If chocolate can be an enjoyable part of this process, then enjoy it. If it makes you feel bad after the fact, don’t eat it. If eating just a little feels good, then eat just a little. Just don’t go with the thoughts that lead to feelings of guilt, or the actions that make you feel ill. This is different for everybody.
Be a truly healthy chocolate connoisseur or, better yet, make your own!
A good place to start is to buy high quality organic dark chocolate with unrefined sweeteners such as honey, coconut sugar or maple syrup and real stevia. A lot of mainstream advice tells people to eat dark chocolate as though its all the same, and healthy, but the quality of the cocoa and the sweetener really matters. To meet these specs, depending on where you live, you may need to order your stash online.
Better yet, make your own. We love making chocolate because it’s such a fun, easy avenue of creative expression. Then you get to eat it, share it, and know exactly what went into it!
When you find your match, have a love affair with your sensual experience. No, pleasure is not a sin. It’s a fundamental human need for optimal health and happiness. So, savor every bite, slowly. Notice the subtleties of flavor in different chocolates.
This is only the beginning…
Below we have included what we call a loosey goosey intuitive recipe for basic chocolate because it doesn’t rely on measurements, but rather on your taste buds and spirit of culinary adventure. Don’t worry, we give you enough detail to guide you. We also offer ideas for fun things you can do with it, like dip fruit in it or make nut butter cups. This is just for starters. Be on the lookout for more creative, delicious and nourishing chocolate recipes from us!
This Valentine’s Day, let’s all remember that true love starts on the inside, not with chocolate. However, if you do make chocolate part of your celebration, wouldn’t you want its quality to reflect the caliber of the love you most want to experience with others and, especially, yourself? Why settle? Why not have the best?
Let’s all clean up our relationship with chocolate so we can enjoy it fully! And, more generally, may we all choose to enjoy ourselves on a deeper level by allowing more and more love in every moment.
How does reading this article feel to you? We would love for you to share your feedback in the comments below. Let us know how if there is anything else we can do to assist you on your healing journey.
Chocolate Love Recipe (well sort of)
Ingredients
Your Basic Chocolate Base
- Unsweetened chocolate (chips, baking bars or bulk chunks), preferably organic and fair trade (slavery doesn’t taste good). If you need an amount, start with a cup, but it really doesn't matter.
- Unrefined, whole food sweetener of your choice to taste: pure liquid stevia (we like Sweet Leaf), raw local honey and/or grade B maple syrup. Start with a spoonful, then add until it tastes right to you. With high quality chocolate, less can be more, but make sure you will enjoy it. We like to mix and match by adding a few drops of pure liquid stevia to give it a non-caloric sweetness boost before adding honey (our fave) or maple. The bitterness of cacao covers the slightly bitter aftertaste stevia can have, so they go well together.
- Finely ground high mineral salt, just a pinch or so. It really makes the flavor pop and brings out the sweet so you don't have to overdo the sugar.
- Optional: Vanilla extract
Fun optional things to add
- Your favorite sprouted nuts or seeds, toasted even yummier
- Shredded coconut, toasted is also amazing!
- Pieces of unsweetened and unsulphured dried fruit (apricots, figs, dates, raisins, goji berries, mulberries, golden berries, etc.)
- Delicious high quality flavorings: peppermint essential oil, orange essential oil, almond extract, spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, chipotle, or try something obscure such as powdered hibiscus OR
- To make amazing chocolate nut butter cups (trust us, you can figure this out!), your choice of nut/ seed butter, like almond, mac nut, pecan, sunflower (and peanut only if you can tolerate its aflatoxins, or mold toxins; Valenica peanuts are supposed to be better in this way)
- To make chocolate dipped or covered fruit, use whatever seasonal fruit you like!
Instructions
- Melt the chocolate using one of two methods (we highly encourage you use one of these methods instead of a microwave, which studies are now showing destroys nutrients and may otherwise harm us in ways traditional cooking heat does not)
- Method 1: Double boiler - sounds fancy but it really just means you are using hot water to heat your pot so you don't heat the chocolate up too hot, too quickly and burn it onto the bottom of the pan. Find a metal/ glass bowl (or smaller pot) that fits nicely into a larger pot. Pour the chocolate (break it up first if using a baking bar). Pour some water into the larger pot, bring it to a simmer, and place the smaller bowl or pot with chocolate in the water bath. Be careful not to get water into the chocolate itself. Stir until melted and creamy! It's a great time to focus on your breath, relax and practice patience as well as savor the smell of warming chocolate. It's like getting a steamy chocolate facial. Yum!
- Method 2: Toaster oven (this is the quick and easy way)- Put chocolate unsweetened chips or broken/ chopped up bar in a ceramic ramekin or tempered glass dish (like Pyrex container). Heat in the toaster oven, and, depending on how urgently you need chocolate, you can set it to 200 - 300 degrees F. Slower is probably safer to prevent it from seizing up. For example, if melting a cup of chips, let it go for about 15-20 minutes and then check on it, stir, and continue heating and stirring every 5 minutes or so until it is smooth and creamy (shouldn't take too long). Adjust time to volume, of course.
- Once the unsweetened chocolate is totally melted, mix in the sweetener(s) of your choice and salt to taste. Remember that if you will be adding dried fruit or dipping fruit in the chocolate, you will need less sweetener.
- Then, add any of you optional goodies. Go with your intuition on how much of each thing.
- Now it’s time to shape it. This part is fun! You can pour it into any mould. Consider how you want your final product to be shaped. You can pour it into a container or casserole dish to cut or break into a bar-like effect. Ice cube trays work great for bon bons. You can order BPA free silicon molds online. We like the heart ones.
- Make your own nut butter cups! Small paper baking cups (the ridged kind) work great for this. You can even buy silicone small baking cups for mini cupcakes and muffins that work great. For the filling, you just sweeten some (eyeball the amount) of your nut butter to taste and add a pinch of salt if unsalted. To assemble, pour a little of the basic (melted, sweetened, salted) chocolate into the bottom of the paper or silicone cup, add a little glob (this is the technical term) of nut butter and pour a little more melted chocolate over it to cover.
- Dip fruit in it! Another use of the basic chocolate base is to dip fruit like bananas, strawberries or cherries in it. If you're in the tropics like us, when it's seasonal, dip mango or pineapple in it.
- Make up your own chocolate treat! Get creative and play.
- Whatever shapes or concoctions you made, put in the fridge or freezer (again freezer means you get to eat it sooner) until it sets. You can keep it refrigerated or not. It should be fine at a moderate room temperature. Just note it may melt if it gets too warm.
Yum (again!)
How do you snap them out of the molds to make them as clean and crisp as those in the photo?
Hi Giulia! Thanks for your question! If you are using old fashioned ice cube trays, just twist and turn them like when you make ice, and they should just pop right out. If you find that doesn’t work for you, try silicone molds, they just peel right off. The colder they are the better they hold together.
Is there a way to make chocolate that is GERD-friendly? I’ve read that you can buy Cocoa Powder that’s been processed with Alkali, but I’m not sure exactly what that means, and if it addresses those theobramines or caffeine in addition to the acidity. I’ve tried Carob as a replacement…….nope, not even remotely as satisfying :/
This is a great question Dana! There are two types of cocoa powder, natural and Dutch process. The Dutch process uses alkali to remove some of the acidity and harshness naturally found in the cocoa. The more processed it is the darker it is. We actually like both kinds because of the different flavors each type brings. Some baking dishes may rely on the acidity of natural cocoa powder to activate the baking soda or powder, but in those cases a recipe usually specifies. As for GERD, I would be interested to see if the Dutch process cocoa is less aggravating because of its reduced acidity. It may still aggravate GERD because it doesn’t reduce the theobromine as far as I know. Let us know what you discover! To find it, look for processed with alkali on the ingredients label. You are right, there is nothing that quite replaces chocolate! The good news is you can heal your GERD and get back to being able to enjoy chocolate. Traci was unable to eat it for years (she was sensitive to it in other ways), but is now able to enjoy it again after a lot of healing and clearing food sensitivities! So hang in there and use it as motivation to continue on your path back to healthy, robust digestion.