Cocoa Powder Varieties And Their Uses

By Author: Russ Murray
Total Articles: 310
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In the past centuries, this pure form of the natural cocoa powder was revered by all and very trusted for its absolutely beneficial use in the various medical cases like fever, heart pain, and emaciation, fatigue, kidney and bowel complaints and can be very well treated well in an extremely natural way. There is historical evidence that specifically points us to the ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations who recorded their use of the organic cocoa powder for the various medicinal purposes for over two thousand years.
More recently, man has indeed tarnished the cocoa’s healthy reputation by adding some of the emulsifying fats, sugars, milk, flavourings and preservatives, and also introduced some really processed cocoa to the world. But this was not true about cocoa in the ancient world. The growing of the cocoa plants dates back to the 1500 BC when it was believed the Olmec Indians grew the cocoa beans as a domestic crop. At around 250 BC to 900 CE, the drinking of an unsweetened cocoa drink was very much in trend or was highly prevalent, but only amongst the elite of the Mayan society. It was an extremely sophisticated ...
... drink even in those days. When the Mayans migrated to the northern parts of South America, they took their cocoa beans along with them. This drink was an extremely big hit with the upper class Aztec Indians and they very well decided to make it their own, imposing a tax on the cocoa beans. The Aztecs were the first to call it xocalatl, which means the warm or the bitter liquid.
The famous explorers namely Columbus and Hernandez encountered the cocoa beans during their course of their expeditious travels. The Mayan nobles gifted Prince Philip of Spain with many jars of the beaten cocoa, the pre-mixed and the ready-to-drink. But neither Spain, nor Portugal shared this gift with the rest of Europe till a century later. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish very well began to add some great amounts of the sugar cane juice and the vanilla flavouring in order to produce a sweetened cocoa drink, which was much more palatable to the taste buds.
Cocoa began to gain immense popularity as a medicinal drink and for its aphrodisiac value. The first cocoa shop in the grand city of London was set up in the year 1657. At this time, too, the cocoa was considered a major beverage only for the elite of the society. It was only in the year 1730, when the price of the natural cocoa powder dropped and it became completely affordable to the common man and was highly adopted by the common man as well due to the drastic cost-effectiveness of the same.
Russ Murray is the owner of this website and writes articles for his own website. For further details about organic cacao powder and Natural cocoa powder please visit the website.