Julie Pech ate chocolate every day for 18 months, all in the name of health research.
She compared brands, one after another, as many varieties and brands from around the world as possible.
She stocked her Littleton home with high-octane chocolate, up to 50 pounds stashed in cupboards: cacao beans and cocoa nibs – raw-chocolate chips – Ghirardelli and Dagoba and Valor, always testing and tasting.
Now she’s a self-described chocolate therapist, dispensing recommendations on how chocolate can help a variety of ills through her book, “The Chocolate Therapist: A User’s Guide to the Extraordinary Health Benefits of Chocolate” (Trafford Publishing).
Pech still eats chocolate daily – 2 ounces a day, or 40 pounds a year – and maintains a size 3 body that’s lithe and muscular.
She starts each day with cottage cheese topped with blueberries, pecans, and chocolate nibs, one of the purest forms of chocolate.
“Chocolate is truly good for me,” she says. “I’m not indulging. I’m doing something I like and sharing it with other people.”
Trend-watchers are focused on the healing powers of chocolate, according to a market research report on the premium chocolate industry released in March.
They’re tracking such market-drivers as the growing interest in chocolate flavors and chocolate tastings, fueled by new products like Cacao Reserve by Hershey’s.
Language of wine
An example of the premium-chocolate trend going mainstream, Cacao Reserve marries the language of wine tasting with exotic varietal names like São Tomé and Santo Domingo.
Its chocolate bar Arríba is touted as “dark milk chocolate with a floral aroma and subtle woodsy herbal notes throughout, hints of roasted nut and caramel.”
These experts predict the next big growth area will be cocoa and drinking chocolate.
And why not?
A mug of natural cocoa has nearly twice the antioxidants of a glass of red wine, two to three times more than green tea, and up to five times that of black tea, according to the February 2007 edition of Dr. Andrew Weil’s “Self-Healing” newsletter.
Chocolate-based skin-care products include Origins new cocoa therapy products, advertised as “body-bettering treatments complete with the addictive aroma of Theobroma Cacao, heightened with a hint of Vanilla, Ginger and Orange.”
As for Pech, she never leaves the house without Palmer’s Cocoa Butter lip balm in her purse. She also slathers Palmer’s cocoa butter on her face as a daily anti-wrinkle regimen.
“I’m walking the talk,” she says. “I use chocolate inside and out.”
Pech is part of the American cultural exploration into the health and science of chocolate.
Chocolate “is one of the highest foods on the antioxidant charts,” she says, adding that it also contains over 400 flavor compounds and plant chemicals that all benefit the body in some way.
But, like good and bad cholesterol, there’s good and bad chocolate.
The nutritional value is in the cocoa, so the healthy stuff is dark chocolate with a minimum of 50 percent cocoa solids.
“Inferior selections filled with sugar, fat and fillers crowd candy shelves everywhere,” she writes. “The chocolate content in many of the mainstream brands doesn’t even top 20 percent, much less the 50 percent required to qualify for healthy dark chocolate.”
Only buy brands with the percent of cocoa listed on the label, she advises, and avoid chocolates with gooey centers because most filled chocolates are very high in sugar.
Chocolate ambassador
In her role as chocolate therapist, Pech travels the world with Norwegian Cruise Lines, touting the health benefits of chocolate.
In Denver, she teaches classes on chocolate at Colorado Free University.
On her website, thechocolatetherapist.com, gift sets of book and bars of healthy chocolate sell out faster than she can stock them. A percentage of book profits go to The Dragyn Foundation, which she created to benefit worldwide children’s programs.
Her mission, she says, is education.
“I’m not saying eat chocolate cake, candy bars and cookies, pigging out on chocolate all day long,” she says. “You have to control it. One good thing about eating quality chocolate, when you eat the good stuff you don’t need a lot of it to satisfy your craving.”
