Shade grown cacao is also a higher quality. The full sin kind is a hybrid. It has less fleshy fruit around the pod. The flesh fruit gives the cacao a fruity flavor during the fermentation process and is generally considered a higher quality chocolate and more flavorful. In Ecuador this shade grown cacao is called "Cacao nacional". Brands like Pacari, hoja verde, and el Quetzal (from Mindo EC) use the national chocolate with very little or no additives. Chocolate also had a really interesting history with the coast of Ecuador considered a gold.mine for chocolate as it has all the right growing conditions and is next to the ocean for transport. A lot of ecuador's history was shaped around the early chocolate trade.
Aw thanks for providing some extra context! I think it's interesting that you say shade-grown is considered higher quality, because the sources I found said that full-sun was higher quality. I wonder how much of that is industry spin?
@@TheRovingNaturalist interesting. From my understanding the full sun is a hardier plant but the quality is better in shade grown. I wonder if its different here vs the stuff that's grown in Africa.
I have been really interested in how biodiversity in shade-grown chocolate in south america vs native rainforest, did you find any studies comparing the two?
@@TheRovingNaturalist yeah there is a paper from the lab I volunteered with as an undergrad that looked at shade coffee in africa where it is native and found that all the understory birds were present.
I don't think I'll be making changes to my chocolate buying because I don't actually buy that much... I'm more of a Werther's Originals guy for some reason!
There's VANILLA in CHOCOLATE?? That's a Checkmate to the ice cream debate of chocolate vs. vanilla :-) (although the correct answer was always strawberry)
Thank you Sheryl, great information and I can say that I've already been revising my chocolate consumption.
Shade grown cacao is also a higher quality. The full sin kind is a hybrid. It has less fleshy fruit around the pod. The flesh fruit gives the cacao a fruity flavor during the fermentation process and is generally considered a higher quality chocolate and more flavorful.
In Ecuador this shade grown cacao is called "Cacao nacional". Brands like Pacari, hoja verde, and el Quetzal (from Mindo EC) use the national chocolate with very little or no additives.
Chocolate also had a really interesting history with the coast of Ecuador considered a gold.mine for chocolate as it has all the right growing conditions and is next to the ocean for transport. A lot of ecuador's history was shaped around the early chocolate trade.
Aw thanks for providing some extra context! I think it's interesting that you say shade-grown is considered higher quality, because the sources I found said that full-sun was higher quality. I wonder how much of that is industry spin?
@@TheRovingNaturalist interesting. From my understanding the full sun is a hardier plant but the quality is better in shade grown. I wonder if its different here vs the stuff that's grown in Africa.
I have been really interested in how biodiversity in shade-grown chocolate in south america vs native rainforest, did you find any studies comparing the two?
I did not, but I think that would probably be a good follow-up video!
@@TheRovingNaturalist yeah there is a paper from the lab I volunteered with as an undergrad that looked at shade coffee in africa where it is native and found that all the understory birds were present.
Cool, I'll definitely look into it!
I don't think I'll be making changes to my chocolate buying because I don't actually buy that much... I'm more of a Werther's Originals guy for some reason!
There's VANILLA in CHOCOLATE?? That's a Checkmate to the ice cream debate of chocolate vs. vanilla :-) (although the correct answer was always strawberry)
Criminally under-subscribed and under-watched - great work as always ✌️
thank you , good researched video. It helped me in my research for carbon emission by chocolate.
Glad I could help!
"As far back as 1900" well that's not that lon-- "BCE"
😂