Cacao Cracks...

What's going on with raw cacao?  There appears to be a bit of a backlash against its crown as the number 1 superfood with reports of people getting rashes and energy crashes. 

The most recent article I read was my fellow collegue and good friend Jo Thomas at Discover Raw about her thoughts after watching Kevin Gianni's video and his reaction to cacao on Renegade Health  (where he talks about a mysterious rash that appears on his side, his energy levels being diminished, his liver and kidneys being strained and his maganesium and potassium levels depleted).  Jo discovered she too was suffering from a cacao rash.

Why am I mentioning these 2 blog posts?  Because I feel a tad alarmed.  I love raw chocolate, I have eaten it almost every day for well over a year and loved its effects.  I find it a fantastic way to introduce people to raw food and I love its decandance as well as its buzz.  I on the whole eat the cacao nibs just as they are as I enjoy the bitterness but of course I make chocolate as well as its such a fun pastime.

Funnily enough I was never a big cooked chocolate eater.

Now all this talk about side effects of raw chocolate have made me look at my consumption.  Am I having any effects?  I first thought about this in the summer and no I can honestly say there was nothing that bothered me.  But this past month I've started to notice I was getting itchy after eating chocolates that I made.  I wondered if this was the cacao butter or powder.  It never happened when I ate the nibs.  I have noticed my energy levels dropping slightly but I've put that down to the 1000 and one things that I'm doing at the moment.

But...

Today, I found this on my side. Its not too pleasant is it? 

Ooh I can't believe I've just shared this with the world! As you can see I've been scratching it as its so itchy and I've got marks all over.

I was in London yesterday and ate a piece of raw chocolate cake from a raw cafe (very delicious it was too), something much richer than I ususally eat but hey it was a treat. Then this morning I had a tbsp of cacao nibs on my raw porridge as normal. 

What's happened?  Is this a reaction to cacao or is it something else entirely and my body is just trying to jump on the band wagon.  Actually I don't want to be on this band wagon as I enjoy my chocolate too much.  It's also Christmas soon and I'm running a workshop on Sunday where raw chocolate is a feature.  Mmmmm... Feedback please!

Comments

[Tracy]

I have just ordered all the ingrediants to make Jo's chocolate truffles, might be worth a little rash ...
Good luck with the workshop Claire, wish I could be there x

[claire maguire]

Enjoy the truffles - I'm sure it won't bring you out in a rash!
Thanks for the wishes for Sunday.
xxx

[sara]

Have you seen Kevin Gianni's video on the Renegade Health Show about raw cacao? He got a similar rash on his torso from putting cacao in a smoothie daily.
http://renegadehealth.com/blog/my-personal-cacao-incident/

[claire]

Yes, I watched Kevin's video which started me off thinking the rash was cacao related. Thankfully, I don't think it is as I've been eating raw chocolate since that rash and nothing else has turned up on my skin. Its all sparkly now!!!

It is strange though how people are reporting rashes with cacao. I wonder why?

[Jerry B.]

I want to thank you and Kevin Gianni for bringing up the cacao/skin rash possibility. I have been taking about 20 grams of raw nibs (ground in a coffee grinder) in my morning smoothies and again at night (another 20 grams) in another drink that I finish the day with.

I was getting pretty addicted to the stuff and was feeling very good with my diet (about 95% vegetarian and of that about 65-70% raw) that I have been on for about the past 6 months. Anyway about a 6-8 weeks ago I noticed a rash on my shin. I tried some things on it as I thought it was some kind of fungus (it has a white flakiness to it). This didn’t work and in the past 2 weeks it spread to other areas on both my lower legs and also to my forearms.

I went to see my doctor to try and find out what it was. He thought it was contact dermatitis and I though maybe I wasn’t washing my yoga pad enough, as these areas are in contact with the mat during my floor sequence.

Well that night I had a full blown immune reaction to something and woke up with hives covering my arms. I keep eating my normal diet (and cacao) and in a few days it had spread to pretty well cover the entire front of my body. I was kind of freaking out by this point and started doing web research on what this could possibly be.

I remembered hearing from one of the raw food guys out there that he felt cacao wasn’t for everybody and I did a search for cacao and skin rash. Thus I arrived at this and Kevin’s site.

So, I have stopped all my supplements for the next while and have taken a lot of things out of my diet until this is cleared up. I cannot be sure that cacao was the problem but I kind of feel that it was. Things are clearing up now (been over a week since the big episode but I did my last cacao hit 5 days ago).

When I am all cleared up I will start to add things back, but I think my days of lots of cacao are over. Thanks again for posting about this, it may have taken me forever to think that the cacao could have been the culprit.