Monocle Magazine Feature!

Rx Choc: Functional Chocolate!

When I opened my practice in 2006 as a certified holistic health counselor, one of my first goals was to help clients choose healthier foods. I began using medicinal herbs and supplements as a means of preventative medicine and made the elimination of sugar and cholesterol a top priority. My clients reduced their intake of most sweets relatively easily - but giving up their favorite chocolate was a toughie!

Although cacao is incredibly rich in nutrition - it’s one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet - all confections available on the market made with cacao beans included unhealthy ingredients like sugar which undermined cacao’s healthful benefits. Because enjoying their new healthy diets was key to clients’ dietary changes, I began making chocolates using cacao beans focusing on both flavor and nutrition density, and I used low glycemic sweeteners rather than sugar.

Then, applying my training in herbal medicine, I also began including superfoods and medicinal herbs to the chocolate, making bars that with ingredients known to have a specific functionality, such as increasing stamina and cognitive function, or strengthening the immune system. As a result, my clients never "forgot to take" their supplements!  In doing so, I was listening to the words of Hippocrates who said, 2,500 year ago: “Let food be your medicine and let your medicine be food.”   

Over the last half-century (and thanks to David Wolfe), discoveries made by nutritional science are fueling awareness that certain foods perform health-related functions over and above the basic nutritional panel of calories, vitamins, and minerals. Some of these foods - goji and goldenberries, maca, and acai, to mention a very few - have been prized for thousands of years for their specific health benefits. As a result, foods naturally rich in such components as antioxidants, phytochemicals, and adaptogens are becoming staples on healthfood and supermarket shelves.  

Food manufacturers are increasingly blending these ingredients into their creations to create products that perform specific functions. Sales of these “functional foods - part of the broader health based/driven food market - are estimated to grow at 10% annually, as opposed to a projected 2% annual growth rate for the overall food and beverage market# .  

One example of “functional” food is our SuperChoc Bar.  We add maca, gingko bilboa, siberian ginseng, goji berries, and twelve other superfoods with targeted functionalities to create a chocolate bar specifically formulated to support cognitive function and stamina.  

Designing foods for specific purposes becomes even more important as more is learned about bio-individuality. People’s genetic backgrounds, metabolism, and blood types determine their nutritional needs, and the ability to create foods meeting almost infinitely diverse nutrient requirements may prove a real blessing.  The result is that functional food may become a major player in preventative health.