Cocoa powder is a classic ingredient that chefs, bakers and home cooks have been using for hundreds of years to make cakes, puddings, cookies and brownies, not to mention hot chocolate (I prefer real chocolate). Low-fat cocoa, on the other hand, has 11 g of total fat per 100 g on the package. This is also equivalent to 0.5 g per 5 g serving of powder. Therefore, in this case, Dutch cocoa powder is a better bet. You must indicate whether it is natural or Dutch cocoa on the packaging. Labels such as “Treaty with alkali” mean exactly the same as “Dutch Treaty”. However, a low-fat cocoa powder has an average fat content of 11%. Normally, low-fat cocoa powder has a fat load of between 10 and 12%. When it comes to chocolate milk, choose a high-fat cocoa powder for stability. In industrial production, the homogenization process will disperse fat from milk and high-fat cocoa powder, resulting in very small fat particles that form a solid network and a sustainable beverage. There is a potentiating effect of cocoa flavonols on nitric oxide, which in turn is a good relaxant of the walls of blood vessels. Flavonols are a type of polyphenol. Cocoa is packaged with flavonols.
If you were to eat raw cocoa beans as is, nowhere else could you get a better source of flavonols than with cocoa beans. The softness of the cream strongly depends on the type of fat applied. A higher fat content easily masks some of the bitterness of cocoa. For sweet-fatty creams, the moisture content of cocoa powder should be less than 4.5% when used for waffles. Natural and alkaline cocoa powders are applicable to cocoa creams. If the values on the package are indicated as 5 g serving, a high-fat cocoa powder should yield 1 g of total fat per 5 g of serving. Use it as a guide as it means the same thing. I have noticed that many “chocolate” or “cocoa” products like chocolate cake, chocolate milk, and cocoa cereals are more likely to contain low-fat cocoa powder than regular full-fat cocoa powder. These beans come from sustainable sources through their Equal Partner direct purchase program. Cocoa powder is made from the plates of roasted cocoa bean particles left behind during the extraction of cocoa butter. Since pressing does not remove all the cocoa butter, leaving the particles coated with a thin layer of cocoa butter, the overall fat content of cocoa powder varies between 8% and 26%.
These solid particles (cocoa powder) are the basis of the taste of chocolate (and not, as you can imagine, cocoa butter). As a result, cocoa powder is the most concentrated version of chocolate there is. It is also very versatile in cooking and chocolate making, it also has a pH of about 5 (McGee, 2004; Wolfe and Shazzie, 2005). Sometimes , (especially in Europe and the United States), cocoa beans are treated with an alkaline substance such as potassium carbonate before or after roasting, after which they are ground into cocoa powder. This treatment is sometimes called “Dutch”, after its inventor – Conrad van Houten – the Dutch chocolatier. The process effectively increases the pH of cocoa between 7 and 8. This has the effect of reducing the content of bitter astringent phenols and caramel-like roasted molecules (pyrazines, thiazoles, pyrones and furaneol). The effect is a cocoa powder with a less bitter and astringent tone and which is softer in taste and darker in color than conventional cocoa powder. “Dutch” cocoa can be available in tones ranging from light brown to almost black, each with its own mild flavor profiles. The difference between Dutch cocoa powder and natural cocoa powder lies in the reference point of the pH in the product.
For example, have you ever had an incident where you added your natural cocoa powder to your milk and noticed that it was clotting in the cup or bowl? Well, it`s because of the acidity of natural cocoa. This natural cocoa powder is more difficult to dissolve in a liquid medium. It takes a little more brute force to dissolve it. It eventually dissolves. After fermentation, the cocoa beans are dried outside, which allows contamination by bird droppings. Salmonella bacteria can thus be found on raw cocoa beans. Dutching improves the solubility and water-binding properties of a cocoa powder. As a result, a Dutch cocoa powder with a high pH (7.5 and above) attracts more water into the ice cream making process, creating a thicker structure with a slower melting time and top-notch texture. This is true whether you make a sorbet with just water or an ice cream with milk (since milk contains water).
This is the kind of cocoa powder I would recommend if good health is your main consideration. The cocoa bean is harvested from cocoa pods. Beans are fermented for different periods of time. Often, products also contain added fat, so in these cases, probably no reduced-fat cocoa powder is used to reduce the overall fat content of the product. It is generally accepted that eating chocolate improves mood and makes people feel good about themselves. And chocolate is often associated with emotional comfort. This effect is thought to be related to the ability of carbohydrates, including chocolate, to promote similar positive feelings through the release of multiple peptides in the gut and brain (Parker et al., 2002). Chocolate consumption has been associated with increased endorphin levels in the brain (which relieve pain and reduce stress) (Benton and Donohoe, 1999), stimulation of the release of serotonin (an antidepressant neurotransmitter) and stimulation of dopamine release via the dopamine precursor tyrosine (which is also present in chocolate) or lipid anandamide (which is an endogenous ligand for the cannabinoid receptor, which is present in cocoa in small quantities). Therefore, chocolate can also interact with neurotransmitter systems to modulate appetite, reward, and mood regulation (Nehlig, 2013; Hamburg et al., 2014). 3.
Consider using low-fat cocoa powder if eating for health is your main consideration. Look at the food label on the package. The total fat content will not only be about 11% (0.5 g of fat per 5 g serving of powder), the saturated fatty acid content should also be low. I already mentioned that high-fat cocoa contains 22-24% fat, right? Use it as a guide. Well, the percentage of fat content I`m talking about is the amount of fat in cocoa powder per 100 g. Wheat flour, sugar, palm oil, low-fat cocoa powder, glucose syrup, dextrose, wheat starch, ammonium bicarbonate, sodium bicarbonate, salt, flavor. When it comes to the question of the best cocoa powder for health, it is always high-fat cocoa compared to low-fat cocoa powder. Which one should I use? What do I mean by that? This means that you can have high-fat natural cocoa, low-fat natural cocoa; High-fat Dutch cocoa powder as well as low-fat Dutch cocoa powder.