Different chocolate cacao forms

Yes, you read that right. There actually is such a thing as healthy chocolate and it is called cacao. This is the name for the bean from which the main components of chocolate occur, however, over time people found it difficult to pronounce cacao so changed it to cocoa which is the more familiar term. Cacao is used to refer to the unrefined, unadulterated version of chocolate, which is the raw material from the cacao bean.

Cacao can be found in many health food stores mainly in the form of cacao nibs which are bits of the bean simply chopped up into rough pieces, the other form is a powder. Both forms are much stronger in flavour and bitterness than regular chocolate as they do not have anything added (e.g. sugar, milk) but can still be used in certain ways to give a chocolatey taste to food with the bonus of added health benefits.