Cocoa mass

Cocoa mass is the whole ground bean, fat included, and carries the cacao tree's full nickel load. It is the ingredient that decides the level of every chocolate it goes into. The second French Total Diet Study puts dark chocolate among the food groups highest in nickel — a ranking of groups rather than a figure for the ingredient.

Cocoa is one of the highest-oxalate foods there is, and cocoa mass is the whole ground bean — the cocoa butter in it dilutes the load a little against cocoa powder, which is the same solids with the fat pressed out. The percentage on a wrapper is how much of this a bar contains.

Cocoa mass is on this axis as a liberator rather than as a source: the elimination protocols name cocoa among the foods that prompt a release, and the bean holds little histamine of its own. It is the whole ground bean, so a bar carries as much of the reason as it carries cocoa — which is what the percentage on the wrapper counts.

Cocoa is the part of a chocolate that carries salicylate, and cocoa mass is the least diluted form of it a recipe uses. The review behind this axis publishes no content for any single food and reports a five-hundredfold spread in the published intake estimates, so the level is a placing rather than a measurement.

Cocoa mass is low in FODMAPs, which surprises people who have found chocolate hard to tolerate. Cocoa itself carries little. What does the damage in a bar is usually the milk - lactose, the D of the acronym - or the inulin added as fibre in a reduced-sugar version. It is worth reading which.

Cocoa mass is the most concentrated cocoa ingredient a recipe uses, and it still sits low here: chocolate came off the MAOI restriction lists when the two reviews narrowed them, and neither names cocoa among the foods that need restricting. Low rather than nothing, because the bean does carry a small amine load.