Christmas Cacao

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without chocolate, but with most commercial chocolates jam packed full of sugar, fats and calories too much of the brown stuff can leave you feeling, and looking, far from your best by the time New Year’s Eve comes around. There is one component of chocolate though that could help you look and feel ‘more’ beautiful this Christmas…

Cacao is the basic ingredient used to make chocolate and comes from the cacao tree, which is grown mainly in Africa and South America. The cacao beans are broken, pressed and milled into a powder and then various ingredients are added, including sugar (one your skin’s worst enemies), to make many of the chocolate treats we are used to finding on our supermarket shelves. 

Whilst chocolate may not be great for our health, in its raw powder form cacao is an antioxidant powerhouse. Anti-oxidants help counter the damaging effects of chemicals called ‘oxygen free radicals’, damaging waste products produced by our body’s metabolism and one of the main culprits blamed for aging skin. It’s theorized that by eating foods packed with anti-oxidants you can help neutralise some of the actions of these harmful chemicals and keep your skin looking younger and healthier - genuine beauty from the inside out.

Cacao has been found to contain even more anti-oxidants than green tea and blueberries, which are commonly associated with detoxing and helping to improve the health of our skin. It is seen to have over 10 times the ORAC value (a scale the level of anti-oxidants are measured on) to that of blueberries and even more when compared to green tea.

How best to benefit from cacao 

Unfortunately rushing out and stocking up on chocolate isn’t the best way to benefit from cacao as most contain relatively low levels. 

Instead try BodyMe’s Cacao Powder, which is certified organic and produced from cocoa beans that are dried naturally and then processed raw to avoid any loss of nutritional goodness. Nothing is added or altered to create the powder, which is kept in its original state for maximum anti-oxidant capacity.

Prices start at just £3.99 for 50g and 20p from every bag bought goes to the Healthy Planet organisation to help preserve the world in which we live for future generations.

For further details or to buy, visit bodyme.co.uk.