If you want to express your love and affection for someone this Valentine’s Day, beware of what you will be giving them. Everyone love Chocolate and this holiday “CHOCOLATE RULES!”
So lets look at chocolate shall we? What is chocolate anyway?
Chocolate come from a cacao tree in a foot ball shaped pod. These pods are harvested and then opened by hand being careful not to harm the beans. Traditionally the open pods are placed in a pit and covered with banana leaves to create heat so the beans can ferment.
Modern manufacturing speeds this process up by placing them over a fire and drying them in a kiln. This process destroys the nutrients in the beans and turns into a toxic poison as it changes the chemical properties and the PH compounds. After the beans are dried and then they are shipped to processing plants to be made into chocolate.
If this does not sound bad enough the manufacturing companies add chemicals to the chocolate, either to make the chocolate go further or to addict it’s customers. I don’t know why but it is in their products.
Just look at some of the chemicals that are in chocolate and ask your self, “WHY are they in there!”
Milk Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate Liquor, Skim Milk, Milk, Butter Oil, Soy Lecithin (we will look at later.) Natural Flavorings, Sweetened Condensed Milk(which uses Milk, Sugar and Corn Syrup)Alkali, Cocoa Butter Oil, Vanilin (we will look at later too), Partially Hydrogenated Plam Kernel Oil, Dipotassium Phosphate Carrageenan, FD&C Yellow 5, FD&C Red 40, FD&C Blue 1 (which all come from Aluminum Industry Waste) Titanium Dioxide. YUMMY !!!!!
This is just one brand of High Quality Chocolate that is marketed by a very distinct box , The “GOLD” Standard in Chocolate as what they want you to think.Now these are some of the ingredients that are labeled but somethings are hidden, some are used by all the big names in the chocolate industry
High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) which promote weight gain and is linked to obesity and latest statistics show that 42% will be obese by 2030, and obesity will be the leading preventable cause of death in U.S. In 2019 according to Princeton University.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) Which in layman’s terms takes the gens from a plant and pair’s them with a totally new plant, lets say a Watermelon and Egg Plant or they pair a fruit with an animal say a coyote with a Strawberry. Who knows what will result in this Pharmakia as they were and never will be any research to long term effects and the U.S. Government has let profits rule them over the health of the people. GMO’s are banned in Europe and other countries but is still legal here and they allow manufacturers to exclude them from their labels.
GMO’s have been linked to cancer, Allergic Reactions, and Fertility Issues in the countries that test for long term use. So WHY are the legal to use here? I say ask the chemical Industry Leaders working for the FDA!
Growth Hormones (RBGH )All the milk that is produced in this country has traces Growth Hormone and Antibiotics even after pasteurization. The levels of antibiotics for a dairy animal far exceeds the safe levels for Man and has been linked to breast, colon and prostate cancers.
Partially Hydrogenated Oils (Trans Fat) Any Oil can be Hydrogenated and most are Soybean, Cotton seed or sometimes called Rapeseed. Previous trials have linked Trans Fats to increase heart disease
Artificial Flavors: The FDA allows THOUSANDS OF SECRET FOOD CHEMICALS to be hidden if they are listed as Artificial Flavors. Again lets ask the CHEMICAL INDUSTRY LEADERS that WORK FOR THE FDA…WHY?? Why must they use Artificial Flavor for something that is so good by it self? Why must there be Artificial Color for a product that is Brown to Dark Brown? Why use Artificial Colors that are a known carcinogens (cancer causing) and then there are the Caramel Coloring which are manufactured by heating ammonia and sulfides under pressure which creates carcinogen compounds that are linked to cancer. WHY?? Ask the FDA, who has former executives of the CHEMICAL INDUSTRY on it’s board making the decisions what is safe ? Yea Right !!!
I saved these two CHEMICALS for last to look at as I felt they are the most outrageous ingredient to to put into a product that will be eaten.
Vanillin… WHAT THE HECK IS VANILLIN?? Its chemical name is C8H8O3, it is the constituents that contribute to the flavor and aroma of Vanilla. For the chemical industry to make those unrealistic profits they have to take a natural plant , fruit etc and take it down to it’s compounds and clone a chemical that will trick your body to think it is the real thing even if it is toxic. So let’s dig in and see what we can find about it.
Natural Vanillin is an organic crystal that forms on the outside of the Vanilla bean. There is only 2 % of dry weight of Vanillin on a cured Vanilla Bean so the extraction of natural occurring Vanillin is very expensive and very highly inefficient so it is made in CHEMICAL LABATORY! The demand for Vanilla flavoring is so large the Vanilla Bean growers can not supply the need . The annual demand for Vanillin is 12,000 tons , but out of these 12,000 tons only 1800 tons are natural Vanillin. The Ice Cream and chocolate industries make up 75 % of the market and confection, bake goods, perfume, medicine and cleaning products make up the rest. The chemical ingredients used to make Vanillin are Lignin , A waste product from the paper / wood pulp industries and Guaiacol which is a petrochemical precusor
Petrochemicals are chemical products made from raw materials of petroleum or other hydrocarbon origin. (Etymologically, the name is incorrect, as the Greek root petro- means “rock”; theoretically the correct term is oleochemicals, from the Greek root oleo-, meaning “oil”.) Although some of the chemical compounds that originates from petroleum may also be derived from other sources such as coal or natural gas, petroleum is a major source of many. This article is mainly intended to discuss organic compounds or materials that are not burned as fuel (see also Petroleum product).
So Why not just use Vanilla? Ask the Chemical Industry ran FDA!!
Soy Lecithin ( E322); Wikipedia say’s Lecithin generic term to designate any group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues composed of phosphoric acid, choline, fatty acids, glycerol, glycolipids, triglycerides, and phospholipids.
Lecithin can easily be extracted chemically (using hexane, ethanol, acetone, petroleum ether, benzene, etc.) or mechanically. It is usually available from sources such as soybeans, eggs, milk, marine sources, rapeseed, cottonseed, and sunflower. Commercial lecithin, as used by food manufacturers, is a mixture of phospholipids in oil. The lecithin can be obtained by water degumming the extracted oil of seeds. It is a mixture of various phospholipids, and the composition depends on the origin of the lecithin. A major source of lecithin is soybean oil As described above, lecithin is highly processed. Therefore, genetically modified (GM) protein or DNA from the original GM crop from which it is derived often is undetectable – in other words, it is not substantially different from lecithin derived from non-GM crop.
To make soy lecithin, soybean oil is extracted from the raw soybeans using a chemical solvent (usually hexane). (4) Then, the crude soy oil goes through a ‘degumming’ process, wherein water is mixed thoroughly with the soy oil until the lecithin becomes hydrated and separates from the oil. Then, the lecithin is dried and occasionally bleached using hydrogen peroxide. Before the ‘degumming’ step where lecithin is removed, the crude oil undergoes a multi-step process to remove the hexane. (5) However, it appears that the FDA doesn’t regulate the amount of hexane residue in food products, and one paper estimated that the residual hexane concentration of soy oil is 500-1000ppm. (6) So, it’s very possible that similar concentrations remain in the soy lecithin. (For comparison’s sake, the concentration limit for hexane in pharmaceuticals is 290ppm.) According to one analysis, total pesticide residues in crude soy oil are around 400ppb. (8) Since the pesticide concentration of the oil after degumming is similar, it’s pretty likely that some of those pesticides end up in the lecithin as well.
I understand the need for a ingredient to hold the chocolate or candy bar together but I know they have to be an alternative to Soy Lecithin. But WHY must it be used? ASK THE FDA !
I could go on but this article is large enough and you can do your own research if this is important to you and your families health. Now they are some man factors of chocolate that care about your health and produce a quality product such as Endangered Species www.chocolatebar.com or Mike Adams over at www.natrualnews.com has some great chocolate products.
They are good chocolate is out there you just have to care enough to find them and not settle for what is pushed for profit by the industry that does not care what illness they cause.
I hope this helps someone and until next time ,,
I wish you Good Health. Herbalist Terry Coffee
Thanks to these folks for their work: The Food Babe askdefine.com chriskesser.com Vanilla Production,Chemical and Bio synthetic Aspects; Food International Pg 119-120 Endangered Species
