Hi fellow chocolate lovers!
After all these lovely recipes with unfortunately lots of unhealthy ingredients and calories, we discovered that chocolate doesn’t have to be unhealthy in advance. A good example might be the chocolate bars from Ombar. We’d like to bring something up about the Ombar chocolate bars.
The story of Ombar started with the interest of healthy eating and living by three friends. An important part of this interest is the raw food diet - a diet consisting of anything, so long as it's raw. One big problem though in a raw food diet is saying goodbye to chocolate. Cocoa beans are traditionally roasted (cooked) and then of course there's the sugar. Fortunately, they found a tropical cocoa-growing location in Ecuador, some like-minded soul was chomping on the cocoa beans straight from the pod - raw.
They did own experimentations with dried raw cocoa beans yielded a wealth of new creations - not all edible. However, the chocolate bars still retain the original seed of intention that they began with: to make available the natural goodness of the raw cocoa bean in a chocolate bar. Nowadays we've taken this a step further by infusing the chocolate with a wealth of nutritious berries and probiotics.
It is needless to say that cacao is the most important ingredient in chocolate bars. Ombar cooperate with SKS farms in Ecuador. SKS farms produce amazing food products. Cacao is a food that is rich in nutrients and a complexity still being discovered. However, probably the most well known health benefit is the remarkable antioxidant capacity of cocoa, due to the high polyphenol content. Polyphenols are delicate, heat-sensitive compounds that are largely destroyed in the chocolate-making process, often intentionally as the polyphenols are responsible for the bitter taste of cocoa. However, in line with SKS Farms' commitment to offer the very best of the Arriba Nacional cacao bean, they have developed a method of processing the cocoa beans - from harvesting through to chocolate-making - where the cocoa does not reach high temperatures which ensures that the 'cooking' process does not begin which would change the structure of the food. The aim is to make sure that you are taking as much of the benefit nature has packed into the cocoa bean as possible even after it's been made into a chocolate bar.
To enrich the chocolate bar, Ombar uses natural ingredients and probiotics. One ingredients is coconut sugar. Coconut sugar is the name given to the evaporated nectar of the coconut palm tree. An interesting thing about coconut sugar is that it cannot be processed in large factories because the sugars ferment too quickly, so the sugar is produced by local farmers who are thus able to obtain a stable income throughout the year as the palm trees can be tapped every month. For this reason, coconut sugar is recognized as the most sustainable form of sugar by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Mahatma Ghandi declared its production as "a way to solve the world's poverty".
Fruit and berries are another important ingredients. What Ombar likes to do with is to combine the fruits with the chocolate - to actually infuse every bite with fruity flavors and enrich the chocolate with extra berries. Examples of fruit and berries being used in Ombar chocolate bars are: Acai berries, blackcurrents, blueberries, cranberries, goji berries, mandarins, strawberries and Yang Mei.
The probiotic strain Ombar uses in Probiotic Chocolate Ombars, is bifidobacterium lactis. Two key benefits of this strain that have been established are that it:
- Maintains the intestinal barrier
- Prevents infections by certain pathogens
The tasty extra’s in the Ombars that adds the ‘yum’ factor to Ombars are whole vanilla pods - seeds and all - dried, then ground into a fine powder
vanilla powder and 100% coconut cream.
Do you want to know more about these lovely healthy chocolate bars or even try them? Visit their site: http://www.ombar.co.uk/.
With love,
Chocolicious
