Note: On October 2, Greg's PowerPoint London presentation will be released to the public.
There are many clinical studies on the medical benefits of cacao (heart, circulation, lipid levels, sugar levels, etc.). Thus, the $100 billion/year chocolate candy industry can become a $200 billion/year health food industry, if only much of the sugar and fat can be removed, foremost the sugar that is used to de-bitter unpalatable unsweetened cacao. Artificial sweeteners have failed (tasting bad, disrupting caloric processes that lead to weight gain, while harming the environment). Artificial de-bittering agents are too expensive or too weak.
Here I discuss a new de-bittering agent from a little used herb of the Andean region of Bolivia and Peru. Using grams of this plant extract, we completely de-bitter ton amounts of unsweetened cacao – an extract that has been consumer tested for centuries. While current commercial chocolate products average 75% fat and sugar, just our prototype is a “chocolate” that is 15% fat and sugar). How low can we go?
I will review the composition of our herbal extract, its history, the food safety research and government regulatory requirements (e.g., a GRAS filing in the U.S. is being prepared) needed for immediate sales in the large global markets (especially the United States and Europe), multiple business and tax opportunities for the chocolate industry, and our plans to start sales in northern South America as a foundation to becoming suppliers to the global chocolate industry of a cacao that does not sweeteners or fart. We look forward to working with chocolate industry to make chocolate the funnest medicine.
Note: Harvard Medical School is doing a massive five-year study of the health benefits of cocoa, funded by Mars. www.candyindustry.com/articles/86746-mars-announces-5-year-cocoa-flavanol-study-with-harvard.
A nice introduction to the health and nutritional benefits of cacao is available at: Cacao to Cocoa to Chocolate: a Health Food by Dr. Roya Kelishadi.