All about cacao
Description, nutritional benefits and cosmetic virtues of the cacao
Tropical tree that can reach 4 to 12 meter height, the cacao tree produces more or less 150 fruits every year
These fruits, called cacao pods, which color varies from yellow to orange, enclose about thirty cocoa beans more or less big, long or flat depending of variety.
Since the 18 century, the cacao was related to a healthy heart; this is where his “food of Gods” nickname comes from. However, the scientific proofs confirming the cacao benefits are very recent.
The Dominican Republic produces 2% of the world production; it’s the American continent third country, and the eighth county of the world.
ChocolateThe more direct product elaborated with cacao beans is the cocoa butter, which possesses many hydrating properties. It contains 53% of fatty matters and is used in the fabrication of many para-pharmaceutics or cosmetic products.
Between the oils and greases available in cosmetic, the cacao butter is the one which helps better to create a protective filter on skin. It heals and cicatrizes too the burns, the cuts, scrapes, stretch marks and is an excellent hydrating massaging oil.
Of course, it is impossible to talk about cacao without thinking about chocolate.This one is fabricated from cacao beans. They are covered up by a white glutinous pulp, which is sampled in Dominican Republic by sucking the beans, and that will serve to a first fermentation under the sun, during which the first cacao aroma develop. Lately they are picked over, cleaned, roasted, then crushed, and finally reduced in powder to be mixed to cacao butter and to sugar to impart chocolate.
Cacao’s butterCake ChocolateThe chocolate contains A1, B1, C, D, E vitamins, iron and magnesium that are supposed to better the vision, bone formation, nervous system and fertility.
It’s not a surprise that the Aztecs considered the cacao tree as a paradise tree, when we know that today we still attribute to its fruit antioxidant properties against ageing or anxiolytic properties against stress or fatigue.
These are good reasons to stop feeling guilty when we eat tons of chocolate, above all in this Christmas time ! ! To consume moderately all the same…
