Raw, "empowered" chocolate
products launched by Empowered Foods;
full review of sensational product line
Tuesday, June 05, 2007 by: Mike Adams
You've
never had chocolate like this before. Of all the
chocolate products I've ever tried (and I've eaten a lot
of them because, of course, it's my job), nothing compares
to the raw, "empowered" chocolate superfood bars
and products made by a small raw foods company in Clearwater,
Florida. It's called Empowered Foods, and its products are
like nothing you've ever tried before. The company's Chocolate
Goji Bar, for example, is made with raw Tibetan goji berries,
raw cacao powder, raw cacao butter, raw mesquite pod meal,
sun-cured African vanilla beans, Himilayan Crystal Salt
and raw blue agave nectar.
And that's just for starters. This company hand makes the
most remarkable raw chocolate "superfood" products
I've ever seen across the health products industry. Their
Goji Jelly Cups, for example, are made with raw wildcrafted
camu camu berry powder, raw Tibetan goji berries and "empowered
chocolate." One taste tells you this is no ordinary
food. In fact, it's among the highest-density superfood
I've yet experienced. And the best part? It tastes so incredibly
good that you'll have to exercise significant self discipline
not to eat everything in sight.
Meet the Raw Guru
The company is found at www.EmpoweredFoods.com and it's
headed by Alex Malinsky, "The Raw Guru," a pioneer
in the raw foods industry who is quite well known as a raw
foods chef and online entrepreneur (despite his remarkably
young age of 22). You can read more about Alex at http://www.rawguru.com/about.html
I spoke with Alex in researching this story and found him
to be a humble, dedicated and authentic person who not only
lives an empowered raw foods lifestyle, but who also seems
quite dedicated to sharing the raw foods experience with
as many people as possible.
Chocolate, of course, is the perfect food for introducing
just about anyone to something new. And you've never tasted
chocolate like this. It isn't just a chunk of processed
cacao powder pressure formed with some refined sugar...
this is a creamy-textured cacao blend that combines raw
mesquite pod meal, agave nectar, vanilla and other ingredients
to create what I can only call a "perfect blend."
The mesquite pod meal, by the way, helps reduce blood sugar
spikes and is well known as an anti-diabetic food. (I eat
the mesquite pods right off the trees here in the desert,
but I admit it's an acquired taste if eaten alone.) When
blended with chocolate and agave, the mesquite pods create
an exquisite texture, taste and healing effect on the human
body. When you also consider the liver-enhancing, brain-enhancing
and anti-cancer effects of chocolate, and you add in carefully
chosen ingredients like goji berry jelly, organic yacon
syrup, black maca, lucuma powder and even nopal cactus (found
in their "Superfood Chocolate bar"), you've created
a powerhouse of superior nutrition that just happens to
be the best tasting bit of food that's probably ever reached
the tip of your tongue.
Let me say, for the record, that I wholeheartedly endorse
the entire Empowered Foods product line. I support this
company and its philosophy, and I think these foods are
such magnificent creations that -- I kid you not -- eating
these foods should be on everyone's among the top 100 things
they do before leaving life on this planet. We've all got
taste buds. Don't miss out on this taste experience!
Also worth noting: I was not paid anything
to review this company or its products, and I earn nothing
from the sale of these products. My endorsement is freely
and openly given based purely on the incredibly quality
and experience of the products themselves.
What's available from Empowered Foods
Speaking of the products, let me explain what they have
and help guide you through what I think are the best products
offered by Empowered Foods. Their products are categorized
into five basic groups: Bars, Cups, Chunks, Mixes and Spreads.
My recommendations for each are below. You can also view
the list yourself on the Empowered Foods website at: http://www.empoweredfoods.com/raw_food_products.html
Chocolate Bars:
These are the flagship products. The basic starting bar
is simply called the Empowered Chocolate Bar. It's just
the basic chocolate mix containing mesquite pod meal, vanilla,
agave nectar, and so on. Once you've tried that, venture
into the Wild Peanut Caramel Chocolate Bar made with raw
wild organic jungle peanuts. The taste makes you feel like
you've been transported right into the Amazon rainforest,
surrounded by deep-rooted plant energy.
Their Ancient Wisdom Bar is sweetened
with raw organic yacon syrup (which has a glycemic index
of about 12, making it the ideal sweetener for anyone watching
their blood sugar) and contains maca, lucuma powder and
raw cacao. And when you're ready for the ultimate nutritional
adventure in superior chocolate products, order their Superfood
Chocolate Bar and get ready for a taste explosion of spirulina,
chlorella, maca, burdock root, nettles, probiotics, icelandic
kelp, dulse, enzymes and much more. Personally, I call this
the anti-cancer chocolate bar because just about every ingredient
in the bar has well-documented anti-cancer properties. It
even contains E3 Live, which is probably the most enzymatically-active
blue-green algae product on the market. Anybody working
to prevent or reverse cancer should, in my humble opinion,
enjoy as many of these Superfood Chocolate Bars as they
wish.
Chocolate Cups
These are fun to eat. They're a lot like those name-brand
chocolate peanut butter cups, except all the ingredients
found here are premium, highly-nutritious raw foods. They've
got Wild Jungle Peanut Butter Cups made with raw almond
butter, raw ceylon cinnamon, raw jungle peanuts and empowered
chocolate. The cinnamon, by the way, is yet another medicinal
spice that helps control blood sugar, so it's the perfect
ingredient to add to a chocolate bar.
Empowered Foods also offers Goji Jelly Cups made with wildcrafted
camu camu berries (the highest natural source of vitamin
C in the world) and raw Tibetan goji berries (extremely
rich in antioxidants, used for 5,000 years in Chinese Medicine).
Personally, I found the chocolate cups to be just as delicious
as the bars, but I liked the bars better because they were
easier to unwrap and eat. The cups take a bit of work, and
if you refrigerate the Goji Jelly Cups and then bite down
on one, the goji jelly smooshes out the side (yes, "smooshes"
is a technical term used by nutritionists).
Chocolate Chunks
Have you ever taken a large, raw fig right off a fig tree,
then stuffed it with raw almond butter, cinnamon, goji berries
and chocolate? I haven't either. But for some reason, the
Empowered Foods team thought this would be a great idea
(did it come to them in a dream?), so they created a product
out of it. The product rocks. Personally, I love raw figs
in the first place (they're WAY better than the typical
dried figs you get in the store). Adding in the almond butter
and chocolate makes this taste so incredibly good that if
I were actually looking for a vice, I'd choose to be addicted
to this.
Empowered Foods also makes Chocolate Coated Durian
Chunks, which is only good if you happen to like
Durian. For those of you who don't know, Durian is an exotic
rainforest fruit that has a very peculiar smell. (Some simply
say it stinks, but that depends on your personal taste.)
I remember flying into Malaysia a few years ago, and someone
had actually stuffed a Durian fruit into the overhead compartment
of the airplane. Every passenger on that plane was then
treated to a three hour long "fragrance endurance test"
by the Durian fruit. Ever since that experience, I have
not been able to enjoy Durian fruit, but your own experience
might be different...
What I really do like, however, is their Chocolate
Coated Wild Ice Cream & Apple Bananas. Now,
before you go ape nuts crazy over how great this name sounds,
please remember that there's no ice cream here. It's just
part of the name of the banana species, which is called
Wild Ice Cream & Apple Bananas because if you have a
really good imagination, they sort of taste like ice cream
and apples. Dip 'em in chocolate and, needless to say, they're
extremely delicious. I enjoyed these so much that I went
back to Empowered Foods and bought more!
Chocolate Mixes
Empowered Foods also offers various chocolate mixes made
with wildcrafted nuts, dried fruits and exotic fruit leathers,
all mixed in with empowered chocolate and other goodies.
The ingredients are too numerous to name, but they include
exotic items like wild rambutan, wild egg fruit, Incan golden
berries and many more. The mixes include names like Meditation
Munchies Hunza Longevity Mix and Kieba's Island Fruit Leather
Mix with Empowered Chocolate, among other interesting names.
These mixes were wonderful, but they did suffer from a
melting problem (see my "melting" notes below).
I liked the basic chocolate bars better. It's also worth
noting that these mixes are not sugared-up to taste like
the super sweet, sour or salty nut mixes you might find
at common grocery stores. To appreciate the taste of these
mixes, it's best to be off all the extreme synthetic chemical
tastes found in American foods. Or, to put it bluntly, if
you're still eating Doritos and other similar junk foods,
your tongue is probably too blasted by all the chemicals
to be able to sense the subtle richness of these exotic
fruit and chocolate mixes. This is a taste that only genuine
healthy people will likely appreciate.
Chocolate Spreads
Empowered Foods also makes a product called Rawtella Hazelnut
Chocolate Spread, which is a raw foods alternative to the
popular Nutella product. It's groovy good. Very rich. Don't
eat this stuff while watching TV... you need to pay attention
to what you're tasting here because you don't want to miss
the experience.
They also have Rawtella Goji-Swirl Spread
which I haven't personally tried, but reading the ingredients
makes me wish I could dive face-first into a giant vat filled
with the stuff. (Does anybody out there remember the old
Smothers Brothers "I fell in a vat of chocolate"
comedy routine? It's from 1962, and still quite hilarious.
See the wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Sides_of_the_Smothers_Brothers
)
Beyond all the products I mentioned here, Alex tells me
that the Empowered Chocolate labs are working hard on new
inventions. Okay, they're not really labs; they're more
like kitchens, and they're probably taking their own sweet
time eating all the mistakes and calling it "research,"
but before long, we're all going to witness the introduction
of yet more Empowered Foods products. I don't know what
they'll be, but I'm fairly certain I want to be at the front
of the taste testing line to try them out.
The melting problem
Quiz time: What happens when real chocolate gets warm? It
melts, of course. This problem is avoided by the more mainstream
chocolate manufacturers by the use of paraffin wax as a
stabilizer in their chocolate products. Some chocolate bars
on the market are probably more candle wax than chocolate,
and as far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't melt, you probably
shouldn't be eating it.
Empowered Foods products do melt upon reaching certain
temperatures (probably in the 120 degrees F range). I discovered
this the hard way after ordering a large box of Empowered
Foods to be shipped to me in Arizona, where I enjoy life
in the desert. It's not only hot in the desert; it's WAY
hotter in the big brown UPS trucks that drive through the
desert. (Just ask any UPS truck driver if you don't believe
me.) The inside of those trucks reaches about 140 degrees
F, which is more than enough to melt Empowered Foods chocolate.
As a result, the chocolate mixes in my shipment had turned
to chocolate smears. All the bars, cups, chunks and spreads
were fine -- just the mixes were thoroughly melted. For
all the other products, I just tossed them into the refrigerator
for a few hours and they were fine, too. So if you live
in a place that gets a lot of sunlight and heats up during
the Summer, you may want to avoid buying the chocolate mixes
until temperatures cool down in the Fall.
Another point to consider is that subjecting raw foods
to UPS truck temperatures destroys their raw-ness. Once
they get delivered by UPS in any hot environment, they're
actually cooked at low temperatures. They've gone way above
108 degrees, and they've probably stayed there for hours.
This is true even if you choose second-day air shipping,
because the delivery of that shipment requires the second-day
air package to be placed on a local truck that drives out
to your house. During that drive, your products get inadvertently
cooked.
This is a big problem in the raw foods industry. It affects
every manufacturer. For customers, it simply means you have
to buy your products before the hot season really begins.
Those of you who don't live in the southern portions of
the U.S. probably don't have to worry about this. Canadians
have no problems whatsoever.
Overall, I enjoy the Empowered Foods products so much that
I'm not letting hot weather stop me from ordering. Even
if these products are inadvertently heated for a few hours
during shipping, they're still far healthier (and less processed)
than the typical chocolate bars you see on the market.
By the way, Empowered Foods is working with somebody in
the U.K. who may be replicating some of these products and
making them available soon throughout Western Europe. I
don't have details on that plan, but I know it's in the
works. Alex's vision is to take this company (and its products)
global, so watch for announcements along those lines. I
hope to be reporting on ways that our readers around the
world can enjoy these products. In addition to our North
American readers (U.S. and Canada), we've got lots of readers
in Australia, New Zealand and across Western Europe. I'm
always keeping you in mind when reviewing these products,
in the hopes that I can recommend regional sources wherever
possible.
The most innovative raw chocolate products on the market
Overall, I consider the Empowered Foods products to be the
most innovative raw chocolate products on the market. They're
not merely good for you, they're artful in their recipes
and presentations. This is exquisite food fit for Kings
and Queens. If I ever hold a party and invite all my hippy
friends over to my house, this is what I would want to serve.
It would be an all-nighter chocolate party, where everyone
is hopped up on Peruvian Maca and high-energy raw cacao.
(No alcohol, please -- we want to stay conscious enough
to experience the chocolate...)
I can't recommend this company highly enough. After reviewing
hundreds of health product companies over the last few years,
it is truly delightful to discover Empowered Foods and their
unique approaches to joyful, healing foods. All citizens
on planet Earth should be lucky enough to taste this chocolate
someday, but alas, there isn't enough to go around. Not
yet, anyway. Help Empowered Foods grow and maybe someday
they can actually make enough of this super healing chocolate
food to give everybody a taste.
Get your own supply by ordering at www.EmpoweredFoods.com
By the way, there's a special offer code for NewsTarget
readers that gives you some extras when ordering from Empowered
Foods. You'll find it at the bottom of each day's email
newsletter. Click here to sign up (it's free).
###
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural
health author and technology pioneer with a strong interest
in personal health, the environment and the power of nature
to help us all heal He has authored and published thousands
of articles, interviews, consumers guies, and books on topics
like health and the environment, impacting the lives of
millions of readers around the world who are experiencing
phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams
is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money
or commissions on the third-party products he writes about
or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs,
a maker of energy efficient LED lights that greatly reduce
CO2 emissions. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known
email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email
Marketing Director,' currently runs the NewsTarget email
subscriptions. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the
executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3
non-profit organization, and regularly pursues cycling,
nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. Known by his callsign,
the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements,
health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
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