> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paleolithic Eating Support List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 4:08 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Was Chocolate, Now Paleo Standard
> 
> Phil > That still leaves squash, which are from the family
> cucurbitaceae, rather than nightshade, as well as other New World foods
> that are generally considered Paleo, such as...
> > avocado
> > guava
> > papaya
> > pecan
> > pineapple
> > sunflower
> > turkey
> 
> Again, the standard is whether a particular food was of the same type,
> however defined, as consumed for many hundreds of thousands of years.
> Bison's close enough.  But is cocao?
> 
> Jim

OK, good, so we have established that New World foods like American Bison can qualify as Paleo and that fruit seeds can be Paleo (such as with sunflower seeds). So the question is whether, like sunflower seeds, the New World fruit seed called cacao can also be considered Paleo. A further question is whether the products processed from cacao can be considered essentially Paleo and/or healthy. The debate over cacao and chocolate has arisen repeatedly, and I have learned more about it each time, so here's another go at it.

To decide the first question we can examine whether cacao is edible, whether it evolved from an Old World food, whether it requires cooking (a potential indicator of possible toxicity, but not a disqualifier, as cooking foods was reportedly common throughout the Paleolithic era), how long it has been eaten, and how healthy the traditional peoples who consumed it regularly were/are. Cacao is edible and did evolve from an Old World food: kola/cola nut. However, kola nut is chewed rather than swallowed, so it is more like a medicinal herb than a staple food. Cacao seeds apparently must be cooked (roasted) to be eaten, so they may potentially be mildly toxic, though the cacao fruit pulp can apparently be eaten raw. Cacao seeds have apparently been eaten for thousands of years, though probably less than ten thousand years. The traditional peoples who ate cacao in the past and those who still do today in the context of a traditional diet appear to have been/are much healthier than moderners. 

Other New World fruits in the same family (sterculiaceae) as cacao also have edible fruit pulp and fruit seeds that are edible when roasted, such as theobroma angustifolia and theobroma bicolor. There are also other Old World species of sterculiaceae that contain edible parts, such as hildegardia barteri. 

Here is a summary of my findings regarding whether cacao is Paleo:
1. Did it evolve from an Old World food? Yes (kola nut and other fruit seeds of the sterculiaceae family)
2. Is it edible? Yes
3. Can it be used as a nutritious staple food, like meats and vegetables? I don't think so
4. Can it be eaten raw? No (although the pulp can)
5. How long has it been eaten? For thousands of years; cacao itself was not eaten during the Paleolithic era, though other fruit seeds from the sterculiaceae family were
6. How did/do the traditional peoples who ate/eat it regularly fare? Apparently quite well, in general
7. Are there studies demonstrating health benefits from it and do they appear to outweigh the counter-studies, if any? Yes, but many of the positive studies are funded by cocoa and chocolate manufacturers like Mars, Inc.

Conclusion: the evidence for health benefits from cacao is stronger than the counter evidence, but more study is needed. The evidence is weaker for products processed from cacao, such as chocolate, but it still leans toward at least some of them being healthy (the darker the chocolate, the more health benefits a study will tend to find). Potentially unhealthy and nonPaleo factors in some chocolate products include sugar and other sweetener ingredients, dairy ingredients, soy ingredients, artificial ingredients, yeast fermentation, and Dutch processing (treating with an alkalizing agent, which destroys some of the allegedly beneficial flavonols), in addition to natural chemicals whose effects are not fully understood, some of which may be harmful and some of which may be beneficial (as in medicinal herbs) and some of which may be either, depending on the circumstances.


P.S. I do hope people will leave questions of faith vs. reason, theism vs. atheism, etc. for other forums--there are plenty dedicated to such discussions. While Paleo topics can at times touch upon religion, this forum was not designed for arguments about the verity, or lack thereof, of religions and matters of faith.