Pass the chocolate please

So I stayed up half the night learning things about super foods on youtube from Nutritionist David Wolfe. He is a character. Very informative. He's kind of a pioneer in the nutrition world. If you are not deterred by the occasional poncho and outspoken views, he has loads fascinating information about health.

There is a lot of talk about the importance of super foods. Super foods? you ask? They are defined by having a dozen or more unique properties. Basically foods that are nutrient dense and healing to the body such as tropical fruits and herbs. Before you think this sounds like mumbo-jumbo, listen to my favorite "superfood". The star of the super food show seems to be chocolate, yes chocolate (in its raw form) David reveres raw cacao (pronounced kuh-KOW) as one of the most nutritionally dense foods on earth. We've all heard about it's antioxidant properties it also has ten times the amount of magnesium, iron an chromium than any other food and apparently magnesium is the number one deficiency in America. He explains that when the cacao bean is heated and processed, it loses much of its nutritional value.

Wolfe told a story about running in to shaman in the Amazonian rain forest while hiking. He asked what this thriving man of the forest thought about the cacao bean. To which the shaman replied "Cacao? You can live on Cacao." He went on to say "we just planted 3000 cacao trees with the kids from the village down there, we believe that that's the future." This was on an island in the middle of the amazon river that they planted these trees. David talks about how cacao is such an ideal crop for the indigenous people because of the profit they reap and effect that it has on the rain forest by keeping the people on their land therefore keeping the forest protected from logging. Eating super foods may not be a main stream lifestyle but I like the idea of eating things that have been eaten traditionally for thousands of years by much healthier generations than our own.

I'm exited by this poncho wearing chocolate pushers speech about the raw cacao bean and all of its possibilities.

If you are sensitive to chocolate, start out small to make sure it agrees with you. You can purchase raw chocolate in bean, nib, powdered or ready made chocolate form online and in some specialty stores, just make sure the source is fair trade and raw of course.

Life is so hard when you have to eat "healthy"

You can find many of Davids bootlegged lectures on youtube.com