Cacao Nibs

Stone Ground & Roasted Cacao Nibs from Belize

Our roasted cacao nibs will make a great addition to your baked goods, smoothies, salads, ice cream, yogurt, or can be enjoyed as a standalone snack! They have a nice crunch with a slightly sweet, dark-chocolaty taste that is very satisfying.

The beans used are grown in the area where the ancient Mayans first began to make use of cacao beans, thousands of years ago.

Today, with our help, the local people are bringing back a tradition that was almost forgotten.

As with many traditional forms of agriculture around the world, the cacao industry in Belize was almost extinct due to the industrial agriculture practices of deforestation and growing cacao on large plantations.

However, with a new interest in quality, excellent stewardship, and fair market practices in the cacao and chocolate trade, the small family farmers of Belize are able to provide a high quality bean as well as provide for their families. They are able to do this while maintaining the rainforest, which will continue to provide beans and other resources for generations to come.

Our nibs start as cacao beans that are sourced directly from the small farmers that grow them in Belize. By working directly with the farms we not only know exactly who raised our beans, but we can also make sure the farmers receive a fair price for their beans.

The beans themselves are very different from those that make up most of the chocolate consumed in the U.S. The most common bean is called CCN-51 and produces excellent yields, is disease resistant, and is so bitter it must be processed with an alkali solution to neutralize the acidity.

On the other hand our beans are unique to their own region of origin and are only grown and processed on a small scale, allowing us to select the very best varieties of beans for our delicious nibs. The common CCN-51 bean is grown on large monoculture plantations, whereas our farmers practice multi-species permaculture while working in harmony with the native plants.

The farmers we work with do not use herbicides or pesticides and as an added assurance, the beans have been tested by a certified lab for the presence of Glyphosate and so far none has been found.

Once the beans are harvested they are then ready to be fermented.

This is done in the native region of the bean and is a very important step. We work with the farms to perfect their fermentation process, which is yet another benefit to working directly with the growers.

After fermenting, the raw beans are dried and then shipped to the U.S.

Once in the U.S. our expert chocolatier hand sorts the beans for quality and any that do not meet our standards are removed.

Next, the beans are expertly roasted to bring out the full flavor.

Then, we crack the beans with a hand roller to separate the nibs from the shell, which is further removed by winnowing.

The result is a crunchy, slightly sweet morsel known as a cacao nib; the original chocolate chip!

Our Roasted Cacao Nibs are:

• Grown without chemical pesticides or herbicides
• Glyphosate-tested
• Harvested and cared for by small farmers in Belize
• Part of a healthy rainforest environment that isn’t harmed to produce the beans
• Made in small batches by the hands of an expert chocolatier
• Naturally, slightly sweet and dark-chocolaty
• Crunchy and satisfying

One single ingredient: Roasted Cacao Beans

Special Packaging

When Healthy Traditions began to look at producing products in the U.S. from traditional sources, food that tested clean from GMOs, glyphosate, and other herbicides and pesticides, we were faced with a dilemma:

How do we package these high quality clean foods?

We began a search for packaging that did not contain harmful chemicals and was not harmful to the environment. What good is sourcing and selling high quality traditional food if it is going to be contaminated by the packaging?

The brown bags you see in our newest products, including our cacao nibs, reflect what we found was currently the best option for packaging our high-quality line of traditional products.

These bags harmlessly decompose anywhere that microbes are present (salt and fresh water, soil, landfills or in a backyard compost).

They decompose into organic matter without leaving any pollutants behind. (Independent Lab tests show - "None Detected.")

They have been lab tested for possible leaching of many heavy metals and pollutants, and none were found.