High Quality Cacao Beans versus Low Quality

This article is by David Wolfe, the founder and CEO of Sunfood Nutrition Inc.  To learn more about Sunfood and David Wolfe you can click here.

About Raw Cacao Beans and Raw Cacao Nibs

Dear Educated Consumer:

I have held my tongue about this for some time, as I often assume that most people will educate themselves on the subject and select a superior grade product.

I have been quite shocked by the poor quality cacao beans and cacao nibs that have been pouring into the market lately hoping to take advantage of the explosion in cacao consciousness due to the release of the book Naked Chocolate: The Astonishing Truth About the World’s Greatest Food I co-authored with Shazzie from the UK and the current media tours Shazzie and I have been conducting on the subject of “chocolate“.

I feel that I must say something for two reasons:

1. A Public Health Hazard: To alert people to a public health hazard due to microbe contamination prevalent in much of the “raw” cacao coming onto the market recently that is not supplied by Sunfood Nutrition (www.sunfood.com).
2. Quality: To give people an understanding of what I could have done in this marketplace years ago and that is to undercut anyone’s price on cacao with an inferior product (the same inferior quality that is now being sold by many websites and stores with few understanding that you get what you pay for).

Public Health Hazard:

We have found by laboratory testing that other “raw” cacao beans on the market are not only of cheap forastero cacao varieties, they also are contaminated with several types of dangerous bacteria (remember cacao is a tropical crop where microbe contamination is more difficult to control).  Here are the exact results returned to us by the lab after we sent them a sample of some of the poor quality “forastero” variety cacao beans being sold on the internet.

Product Analysis of Other “Raw” Cacao Beans On The Market

Analysis Result Unit

E. Coli / Coliform (AOAC 991.14) *TNTC Cfu / g
Salmonella (AOAC 989.13) - ve + / -
Stephylococcus Aureus (AOAC 2000.15) *TNTC Cfu / g
Yeast and Mold (AOAC 897.02) *TNTC Cfu / g
Total Aerobic (AOAC 990.12) *TNTC Cfu / g

TNTC = Too Numerous To Count
Cfu/g = colony-forming units per gram
-ve = verified existence

A “-ve” rating for Salmonella on any food would get it pulled from any store immediately. And a “-ve” is a low rating compared to a TNTC rating! This lab result demonstrates an incredibly dangerous level of microbe contamination.

A “-ve” rating for Salmonella on any food would get it pulled from any store immediately. And a “-ve” is a low rating compared to a TNTC rating! This lab result demonstrates an incredibly dangerous level of microbe contamination.

Be careful with dangerous, cheap imitation products. We have done the research and the testing in order to provide you the highest quality and safest product possible.

Sunfood Nutrition “cacao beans” and “nibs” are quality controlled at every step until they reach your hands.  Sunfood Nutrition delivers the highest quality, best tasting, microbe-free cacao beans/nibs in the world.  The pictures below demonstrate the dramatic difference in quality of cacao on the open market.  Sunfood Nutrition cacao beans are pictured below on the left.  A competitor cacao bean product is pictured on the right.  The mold and bacteria contamination is obvious in the competitor sample.  However, this type of contamination is not obvious when the product has had the skin removed and is broken into nibs.  Be aware of cheap cacao bean and nib products.

If you doubt or do not believe the results above, compare Sunfood Nutrition’s (www.sunfood.com) Cacao Beans/Nibs with any other Cacao Beans/Nibs on the market at home.  Simply soak both products in separate cups of dilute food-grade hydrogen peroxide (1-2%).  The more foaming and bubbles you see, the more contaminated is the sample with microbes, mold and bacteria.

Most distributors and sellers of cacao products are not malicious in their intent of selling a contaminated product.  They simply do not know what kind of commodity they are dealing with and assume that their product is clean and edible.  This message is a wake up call to cacao distributors and sellers to clean up their product before exposing innocent people to dangerous contaminants.  No longer can distributors and sellers claim ignorance on these matters.
Quality:

I want to reiterate that I could sell “raw” cacao at a volume that would allow me to undercut anyone in the industry – with ease. I have selected not to do that because the “raw” cacao that is available at that price and that most people sell is of a greatly inferior quality and is offensive to the consumer.

What constitutes excellent quality cacao? Cacao should have a rich flavor, low astringency, bountiful oil content, purple hues visible in the bean/nib, a microbe-free status and a real organic certification. Cacao should be devoid of any vinegar-like tastes, crisp to the taste (not soft), nutty in texture instead of crumbling into a powder in the bag and mold-free (no visible mold anywhere especially on the skin of the bean).

Because we live in a capitalist society, most people will opt for the lowest price on products regardless of quality (most of the time) or they will automatically suspect that any higher priced item is overpriced and of the same quality as everything else (most of the time).

These two issues indicate a deep crisis always present within capitalism and that is people will do whatever it takes to undercut their competitor’s price (which inevitably undercuts payment to our life-blood farmers when the product is in the food industry).  Essentially, capitalism creates a crisis of education or else individuals will unknowingly opt for literally dangerous cheap products.

A tremendous amount of planning, strategy and quality control has gone into bringing Sunfood Nutrition’s cacao products to you and you should know about it.  This has all been done and set in place long-before competition sellers even knew what a cacao bean was.  We bring this product to you at a competitive price, yet we bring a VASTLY superior quality to the market.

Sunfood Nutrition (www.sunfood.com) supplies cacao that is:

• not fermented (less than 15% … compared to 100% fermentation which is the industry standard)
• a real USDA organic certification
• quality controlled from start-to-finish
• fino de aroma variety (best tasting raw variety in the world)
• crispy fresh texture
• from a fruit that is blue skinned
• grown by happy, well-paid farmers
• microbe-free

I know I vote with my money, that’s a vote that counts. I vote quality every time.

I hope this message has been helpful. In any case, HAVE THE BEST DAY EVER!

David “Avocado” Wolfe
Sunfood Nutrition Inc.
www.sunfood.com