Featured Item ChocaMaca™ Organic Chocolates: individually wrapped chocolates -- each blended with 2 full capsules of wild-harvested, nutritional Amazon herbs Shipping of this item not possible during hot, summer months. Shipping will resume in Sept/Oct 2008. Capsules Qty     90 count $55       30 count $21   View Complete Product List

Foot-long ovoid pods follow the flowers. A tree may bear as many as 70 pods each year, with each pod holding about 50 seeds / beans surrounded by juicy, sweet pulp, Cacao beans are extremely rich in fat, carbohydrates, proteins, mucilage, polyphenols like catechins (the antioxidants in green tea), proanthocyanidins, tannins, minute amounts of stimulating alkaloids theobromine and caffeine, and the mood-lifting love molecule PEA. Chemical constituents aside, chocolate in modern Western society has become a symbol of sweetness, sensuality, innocence, pleasure and the richness of life.

By combining chocolate with other Rainforest herbs in its ChocaMaca Organic Chocolate and herb balls, Amazon Herb Company returns chocolate to its wild Amazon origins. From there, cacao moved north to Central America, where Mayans began its cultivation in 155 BC. Before long, they developed a sophisticated fermentation process that turned the cacao bean into a versatile medicine and cherished ceremonial drink.

Like the Mayans, the Aztecs prepared many medicinal chocolate beverages. Cacao beans blended with ground maize and herbs were thought to alleviate fevers, breathlessness and faintness of heart; relieve pain (when combined with ground hot pepper); and induce sleep (when mixed with the ground vanilla bean). Chocolate herbal preparations were believed to help emaciated patients gain weight; others calm the nerves; and support intestinal health by stimulating the kidney and bowels.

It was the sacred beverage xocoatl, sweetened and flavored with vanilla and cinnamon and served in that Montezuma first served Cortes in 1519.

In our Western society, we turned chocolate into a substance rather than a plant sacred in the context of its culture. Seeing something as substance or a tool rather than a sacred gift to be celebrated in a ritual way reduces its spirit. Like tobacco, sacred mushrooms, sugar and coca, chocolate in Western society became an addictive, self-ended substance.

In the Andes mountains, natives have chewed on coca leaves for millennia to relieve hunger, fatigue, pain, cold, chronic high-altitude sickness and possible death. Used in ritual ceremonies, coca enhances the natives' relationship with what they term "the powers."

Chocolate in its traditional culture was a bitter herb, a sacred rite and a social drink. Today's modern relationship with cacao turned chocolate into the sugary sweet confection. Chocolate has become the object of intense fascination, craving, obsession, addiction and, sadly, modern child slavery. Half the world's cocoa is grown on about 600,000 plantations in the Ivory Coast. An investigative report by the BBC in 2000 indicated that hundreds of thousands of children are being purchased from their parents for a pittance, or in some cases outright stolen, and then shipped to the Ivory Coast, where they are sold as slaves to cocoa farms.

The $13 billion U.S. chocolate industry is heavily dominated by conglomerates who control two-thirds of the market. Many of these companies use huge amounts of Ivory Coast cocoa, so their products almost certainly exploit child slaves.

At the same time, a growing number of companies are taking the steps to assure their chocolate is untainted by slavery. They use only organic or FairTrade cacao. Along with the move toward organic agriculture and non-exploitive labor practices, chocolate companies are combining real foods, whole grains, nuts, fruits and orange zest with chocolate.

Amazon Herb Company's ChocaMaca goes a big step further in rejoining chocolate with traditional herbs and grains from its original bioregion, then molding them into small spheres reminiscent of Tibetan herb balls. Through nutritional analysis, we are learning and naming over 300 chemical compounds at play in cacao. We are exploring their psychochemical effects on our central nervous systems, our bodies, minds and moods.

While most chocolate contains some sugar, chocolate clearly delivers far more than a brief sugar high. Remove the refined white sugar and we move closer to the bitter herb of its origins. What is it we love so much in chocolate? Could it be chocolate's tryptophan, the essential amino acid that enhances serotonin function, hence diminishing anxiety? Theobromine may be the Aztecs' agent against mental stupor. Or perhaps chocolate's key to our hearts is its phenylethylamine (PEA) content. Phenylethylamine, commonly called the "love molecule;' is a natural chemical suspected of causing the euphoria experienced by lovers. PENs presence in wild blue green algae, another ingredient in ChocaMaca , may explain the increased energy, enhanced mental clarity and pervasive upbeat optimism experienced by algae-eaters.

How can we recapture the health-giving energetics of pure chocolate, its natural festive qualities and the ceremonial rituals it evokes? We can express our gratitude by knowing and honoring cacao's Amazon Rainforest origins. The Amazon represents the greatest source of life energy on the planet. From the mere three percent of its 265,000 botanicals Western science has researched, we derive nearly 40% of our modern pharmaceuticals. What other treasures lie waiting in the expanses of Rainforest now threatened by loggers, ranchers, miners and oil drillers?

As we consider the origins of chocolate, we come to appreciate the sources of the cacao we enjoy. This appreciation may draw us closer to the source of our other daily foods. Considering the sources of our chocolate -Third World countries with staggering human, social, economic and environmental challenges -we may imagine solutions for those conditions.

Finally, remembering the ingenious processing that gets the cacao from tree bean to mouth-watering chocolate morsel, let us bring equally imaginative mindfulness to the quality of all our food and of all our relations.

ChocaMaca Organic Chocolate treats are just one of the healthy products that we distribute. We are equally excited about:

• Shipibo Treasure Tea: contains 8 Rainforest herbs and sweetened with Stevia natural sweetener.
• ChocaMaca organic chocolate treats enriched with nutritious Amazon herbs: slightly sweetened and each ball contains 2 capsules of nutritional herbs.
• Graviola extract herb and Cats Claw herb (known as Una de Gato in Spanish) for powerful Immune support.
• Fiberzon high fiber food powder and Fiberzon Plus dietary fiber capsules: gentle yet powerful intestinal cleansing products. Two easy, natural ways to get many of the beneifts of a high fiber foods diet.