The cocoa ceremony is intended to release inner blockages. If you do it right, you throw off your ballast, release negative emotions and strengthen your gut feeling. The social networks are full of spiritual cocoa drinking. Some even curse coffee, which only energizes them and doesn’t bring them down like cocoa does. The traditional cocoa ceremony originally comes from South America. The thousand-year-old ritual had an essential meaning for the natives: They honored the goddess Cacao with it and, with the help of the ritual, found their natural balance with nature. You can now do this within your own four walls. But what is actually behind the hype?
We got advice from nutrition expert Dagmar von Cramm. Your conclusion is sobering. “Every vegetable brew contains bioactive substances that are good for us,” says the expert. “But too much coffee makes you too awake – and too much cocoa contains a lot of calories.” Coffee contains an average of 100mg of caffeine per 150ml cup, compared to around 5mg for cocoa. This means that if you prefer cocoa to coffee, you are at least doing something good for your nervous system, because it does not make you jittery. If you prepare de-oiled cocoa powder with hot water, the drink contains around 80 kilocalories because the powder contains fat, which coffee does not have. The milk can be added to both. Instant cocoa is lower in calories, about 40 kilocalories, but contains plenty of sugar.
The nutrition expert summarizes that the cocoa does bring advantages, but so does the coffee. “If cocoa is prepared with dark powder, it protects the heart with polyphenols. And lifts the mood with theobromine. But coffee also contains polyphenols and has multiple health benefits.”
In the end, the well-tried rule applies: everything in moderation and if you are too jittery from excessive coffee consumption, you can try a cocoa ceremony.
