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Juan Manuel Arbelaez

WHY TO GO FREE OF EXTRA COCOA BUTTER?

In this blog we want to raise awareness about the importance of eating a chocolate with NO extra cocoa butter and only 1 or 2 ingredients: cacao beans and the sweetener (sugar, stevia, unrefined cane sugar, coconut sugar or any other).   CACAO BEANS ARE A SUPERFOOD, ONE OF THE FOODS WITH THE HIGHEST ANTIOXIDANT CONTENT. This alone does not mean that a dark chocolate will also be full of this antioxidants as there are other ingredients composing a chocolate bar. These include the sweetener each manufacturer decides to use –sugar, unrefined cane, stevia, etc– extra cocoa butter, milk powder, lecithins, artificial flavours,...

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Juan Manuel Arbelaez

WHY IS FAIR TRADE NOT ENOUGH?

Do not get us wrong. Fair trade is a good concept, just not for some countries and communities. This company started 8 years ago as my father, Hernan, did not want to sell his cacao production as the price was too low. It was no enough to cover the expenses. He told us: "Look who our neighbors are, people who live in extreme poverty and lose money every time they sell. They do not realize about it because they are illiterate and don't know math. They do not run their costs and just sell at the price the buyer is paying....

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Juan Manuel Arbelaez

WHAT DOES "RESPONSIBLE CHOCOLATE" MEAN?

Our company was born 8 years ago in Tolima, Colombia, with the purpose to become the best in the world helping small farmers in Colombia to leave extreme poverty behind and positively change their quality of life. Throughout the first years this evolved into what we called the Responsible Chocolate® movement and consist of 5 actions that help the farmer who begins working with us from day 1.    The first action immediately helps the farmer financially and motivates her/him to trade directly with us. We eliminate middlemen and acquire the logistic and post-harvest costs off farmers. In a country like...

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Juan Manuel Arbelaez