If you don’t know who David Wolfe is yet, you’re in for a treat as he’s a guest on the Pete Holmes Show. (I had no idea who Pete was!) David gives the lowdown on edibles in the park and some enlightening nutritional information about superfoods and just how many coca leaves it takes to make cocaine (and why the plant is way safer than the illegal drug). We could do without the laugh track, but the clip is funny enough to make you chuckle and search your house for goji berries.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The post Foraging In The Park (High on Coca Leaves?) With Raw Food Guru David Wolfe [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Nothing satisfies a sweet tooth quite like chocolate does.

However, the dessert snack gets such a bad rap considering its milk and sugar content — to say nothing of its addictive nature! The good news is that you can enjoy chocolate, and all its nutritional glory, by stripping it down to the essentials and replacing certain ingredients with healthier alternatives. Munch into this raw chocolate recipe, which takes under five minutes to prepare. Enjoy!

Let’s take a look at a popular chocolate bar – Hershey’s Milk Chocolate – and consider exactly what we get ourselves into every time we peel the wrapper. A 1.55-ounce (43-gram) Hershey’s bar contains 210 calories, 13 grams of fat–8 of which are saturated–26 grams of carbohydrates, 24 grams of sugar, and only 1 gram of dietary fiber. The ingredients are simple but unforgiving – sugar, milk, lactose, milk fat, emulsifiers and artificial flavors.

With more than half of the calories derived from fat and only 1 gram of dietary fiber, Hershey’s milk chocolate bar is devoid of nutrition and is simply a dessert to be enjoyed purely for its taste, but with an air of restricted indulgence. With milk and sugar as the base of its ingredients list, the bar ultimately promises peaked blood sugar levels and a dessert that is hard to digest.

Chocolate in its raw state is actually a “superfood” boasting amazing nutritional benefits, including high levels of antioxidants and the ability to reduce heart disease. However, over-processing and the addition of sugar and milk often outweigh what it has to offer.  The following recipe takes out the milk and the sugar and replaces them with wholesome goodness of vegan, raw ingredients.

The chocolate industry is no angel either in terms of labor laws, so there is something to be said for taking your new-found chocolate-making skills to the kitchen. Luckily, this recipe only take minutes and offers room for improvisation. Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 cup raw cocoa powder
• ¾ cup coconut oil
• ¾ cup agave nectar or maple syrup
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• Dash of sea salt
• Dash of cayenne (optional)

Directions

If the coconut oil is hardened, place its container in a bowl filled shallow with warm water. Once melted, mix the coconut oil with all the other ingredients in a blender and pour the chocolate into molds (ice cube trays work if you don’t have molds). Store at room temperature, or in the refrigerator to speed up the process, until the molds have hardened. Enjoy!

Photo Credit: Chocolate Reviews

The post Healthy Indulgence: Vegan, Raw Chocolate Recipe (in Less than 5 Minutes!) appeared first on EcoSalon.