Cuzco, Peru – The coca leaf, stigmatized for being the raw material of cocaine, has its good side and is being used in Peru to make what its promoters call a healthy kind of bread, as well as candies and a cavity-fighting toothpaste.
Several establishments in this highland city have launched the manufacturing and marketing initiative with the aim of showing that the plant sacred to the Andean peoples, besides fighting altitude sickness and its use in pre-Colombian rituals, is edible and has cosmetic and medicinal uses that contribute to a healthy life.
Saying that coca is “a very sensitive matter,” the expert and proprietor of the Coca Shop, Christo Deneumostier, told EFE that “coca is not a problem, but the use that’s made of it is,” an allusion to the large portion of the national crop that winds up in the hands of drug traffickers.
He said that the solution is in industrializing and commercializing the plant, and in making the best use of its properties by manufacturing high-quality, healthy and tasty products with it.
Andean peoples for millennia have chewed the leaf, which when ingested in that fashion has a mild stimulant effect akin to caffeine.
Coca leaf contains 14 alkaloids, but only one of them has been exported, the one that is present in cocaine.
The 13 others include proteins, vitamines, carbohydrates, fats, fibers, calories, calcium, phosphorous and iron, among other basic components for a balanced diet, according to several scientific studies, including one conducted by Harvard University in 1975.
Dr. Fernando Cabises found, according to Opcion Ecologica magazine, that coca dries out the respiratory system, forms muscle cells, prevents ulcers and gastritis, is an analgesic, thins the blood, prevents altitude sickness, improves liver and other bodily functions, is a diuretic, accelerates digestion, regulates melanin in the skin and prevents cavities.
Coca Shop was founded in 2004 in Cuzco on the initiative of Deneumostier, a Lima resident of Belgian ancestry, and Italian Emma Cucchi, the founder of the Kuychiwasi (Home of the Rainbow) Association.
In its first year, Coca Shop increased its revenues by 75 percent and, according to its owner, the key to its success lies in the fact that its employees, among them several handicapped workers, receive training and instruction in growing coca, the production of derivatives and marketing coca-based products. All the firm’s profits are reinvested in the business.
The result is a shop window full of various food products, all of them containing coca leaf, including chocolate, ice creams and indigenous grains, like quinoa and kiwicha.
But this is not Cuzco’s only example of a firm that utilizes coca leaf in the production of its wares. The Casa Ecologica, also started two years ago, offers breads, biscuits, soaps and toothpastes developed by Dr. Maria Escobedo.
Business owner Rina Gutierrez told EFE that her soaps have exfoliant qualities and her toothpaste prevents cavities.
Tourists are the main clients at these stores, which are located in Cuzco’s central historic district, since the products help them to prepare their bodies for the long hikes and excursions through the sacred valley of the Incas and around the Andean peaks, although the exotic nature of the products also help sales.
But Gutierrez says that the marketing of coca leaf goes beyond just selling new products. It’s also about “preserving the ancient Andean cultures and their ways of living.”
However, the task of ecologists, scientists and experts researching positive uses for coca leaf is not done, given that the United Nations still has the plant on its list of harmful products.
In neighboring Bolivia earlier this year, Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca suggested that coca leaf be used to make a nutritious and stimulating breakfast cereal for kids.
Choquehuanca proposed in Congress that the new food be included in breakfasts that municipalities provide for schools, so students can get the benefit of its high calcium and phosphorus content which is greater, he argued, than that of milk or fish.
Objecting to Choquehuanca’s idea was the president of the Bolivian College of Nutritionists, Silvia Brun, who said the leaf indeed contains carbohydrates, iron and phosphorus, but “it isn’t apt” for human consumption.
The Bolivian ministry of health in February presented a document that said coca, with regard to calories, “is richer than potatoes, cassava and quinoa, and has at least twice as much protein as corn, wheat, qiwicha, quinoa, potatoes and cassava.”
The Bolivian administration of President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, has begun taking steps to decriminalize growing coca plants and marketing the leaf.
