Chocolate making
To make chocolate, make sure that your kitchen is clean and some restaurant secures their privacy in kitchen, some restaurant contact curtain makers to do their requested curtain for their kitchen. Cocoa beans are roasted and ground at around 120 ° C to 160 ° C. The heat that arises during the roasting and grinding process liquefies the fat in the cocoa bean, the so-called cocoa butter. The resulting creamy cocoa mass now consists of cocoa butter and cocoa solids. The latter is usually sold as de-oiled cocoa powder. The cocoa mass is the basic ingredient of every chocolate. The only exception is white chocolate. It contains only the cocoa butter from the cocoa bean, i.e. not the dark cocoa solids. The cocoa mass is then mixed with sugar, milk, or cream powder and the emulsifier lecithin (mostly made from soy). The chocolate mass is then rolled so that its consistency becomes finer. The result is then poured into molds – and the milk chocolate is ready. The very dark and somewhat bitter types of chocolate do not always contain milk powder, but often only the cocoa solids, cocoa butter, and some sugar. The higher the pure cocoa content (i.e. the proportion of cocoa solids) in the chocolate, the darker, more bitter, and less sweet the chocolate will be.
Organic chocolate
The cocoa tree is usually kept in monocultures, so it is very susceptible to pests. That is also the reason why these trees are sprayed particularly intensively with pesticides. Therefore, buy cocoa – and all products made from it – exclusively from controlled organic cultivation. These cocoa trees grow in mixed cultures, which help ensure that the soil is very nutritious and that pests are kept away naturally. In addition, the soils on which these cocoa trees grow contain significantly higher nutrients and vital substances, which are of course also found in the chocolate.
Cocoa – One of the best sources of magnesium
The cocoa bean is one of the greatest natural sources of magnesium of all foods available to us. Slightly de-oiled cocoa powder provides over 400 mg of magnesium per 100 g and would therefore easily cover the daily requirement of an adult in this amount. Of course, you don’t eat 100 grams of cocoa powder a day. But it is clear that natural cocoa or chocolate with a very high cocoa content can make an important contribution to covering our magnesium needs, even in small quantities. Cocoa can – if not in the form of bars, pralines, and bars – e.g. B. can be enjoyed in drinking chocolate with almond milk or in a chocolate smoothie. If you think about all the positive effects magnesium has on our health, then cocoa should have a place in our diet for that reason alone. Magnesium, for example, has an anti-inflammatory effect, promotes heart health, activates over 300 enzymes, relaxes our muscles, relieves headaches, and, last but not least, supports all efforts that should lead to ideal body weight. In addition, cocoa beans and ultimately chocolate with a high cocoa content also contain a considerable amount of other minerals and trace elements such as calcium, potassium, phosphorus, iron, and copper.
Antioxidants in cocoa and chocolate
The cocoa bean contains many other valuable ingredients. Well over 500 are already known. Some of the phytochemicals from the group of polyphenols contained in the bean are flavonoids. They have a strong antioxidant effect, so they can protect the body from the destructive effects of free radicals. These antioxidants strengthen and relieve the immune system so that their health benefits cannot be rated highly enough.
The Chocolate Study
One of the first studies to examine the influence of polyphenols on cholesterol levels was carried out by scientists from the University of Hull in England. They published their results in 2010 in the journal Diabetic Medicine. This study was a crossover study in which the participants were divided into the experimental group in one phase of the experiment and the control group in the other phase. In this way, the scientists were able to determine the effects of their measures both in relation to the individual test subjects and to evaluate the results within the group as a whole.
Chocolate increases good cholesterol
The randomized double-blind study was carried out with 12 participants, all of whom had type 2 diabetes. In the experimental treatment, the test subjects were given 45 g of chocolate a day, which had a high proportion of polyphenols. The control group received the same amount of chocolate, but it only had a very low polyphenol content. The scientists found that consuming chocolate, which was high in polyphenols, resulted in both an increase in HDL cholesterol ( good cholesterol ) and a decrease in total cholesterol levels.
Chocolate lowers bad cholesterol
These results were confirmed and even supplemented in two further studies that were carried out over the course of the following two years. The first of the two studies were published in 2011 in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition