Sweet Healing: Chocolate’s Role in Health Transformation

Introduction to Chocolate and Health 0:00

Welcome back to the conversation. And today might be the most fun talk on this summit because we're talking about chocolate. Jonathan Pantalis, welcome. How's it going? Oh, it's so good. You're the founder of Living Ratio Chocolates, and it's a company known for its innovative and health conscious approach to chocolate making, of all things. Your journey into the world of chocolate was inspired by, of course, a personal quest for health and wellness, like most of us in the health space. We had a problem and figured out a solution, but it really led you to create a product that's indulgent and simultaneously beneficial.

And I asked you to speak on this summit because food is polarizing, and so many people actually quit their health journey because they feel like they can't get the food piece dialed in. Right. And that they feel if they can't, if they fail at food, then they feel like they're failing at everything else. So I would say the number one reason that people give up on their detox protocols, their parasite protocols, their, you know, mitochondria energy producing protocols is because they feel like I can't do that because I'm not getting the food piece right.

So if I can't get the food piece right, I may as well not be doing any of this. And so I want to I want to change that mindset and I want you to help us do it today. And we're going to get into the world of chocolate and we're going to talk about chocolate. That's actually good for you. But let's start out by sharing with us. You know, I think it's really important to share a little bit of a story here and kind of humanize this for people. So you have a health, you know, story and it led you to create chocolate.

What was it, you know, that had you do this? And and then we'll get into, you know, the benefits of this chocolate that you make and how it helps the nervous system and helps you get into a healing state. Yes, chocolate can get you through Healing State. I love this talk. I like I said, it's going to be the best talk ever. So take it away. What happened here? Why did you create this? Totally. It's okay. First of all, I guess it's I'm just really happy to be here because I truly believe in what you're doing and, like what you do aligns with.

Like what? The conclusion that I came to during my health journey. So I'm really excited about this, but I had a lot of challenges with focus and energy and just emotional regulation when I was growing up in the earlier phases of my life, I was very challenge. I had a little dyslexia, I had all sorts of issues that made it very difficult for me to function as a normal human beings. I'm sure a lot of people can relate once you have some of these issues would be parasites or whatever, sugar. All these toxins can cause a lot of issues.

So I struggled tremendously. I was very ambitious. I had a lot of goals, I had a lot of things I wanted to do, but I felt awful all the time. Like I would, you know, I my energy would would maybe an hour or two a day and then I would go into a slump and then I would feel bad or be myself about it, fall into depression. And it was just like a really, really vicious cycle. One day I learned about detox and that maybe the food I was eating had something to do with how I was feeling. It's a you know, it's a concept that growing up on a standard American diet and everybody thinks about it, it's like food is calories.

But that was that really was my mindset. I really believed that what if they sold it to us in the store or the restaurant? It has to be safe. It has to be healthy. The reason why I'm feeling bad, it probably has nothing to do with food. I really do think those things. Yeah. You thought it was your own fault? I sounds like you were the idea guy who couldn't get anything done. And. And this is a lot of people who tune in to this to hear, I call it, you know, middle age deficiency and inflammation syndrome.

And it sounds like it started in you earlier. And, you know, if we don't solve this, the underlying causes of low energy, brain

Jonathan's Health Struggles and Sugar Sensitivity 4:00

fogginess, difficulty concentrating, difficulty, you know, being creative. And if we don't solve this, it just carries on throughout our lives and force, especially your generation. I mean, I think you're about 20 years younger than me. We see a lot more of this because you were born into a much more toxic world than I was. So. So I was born in the 70s toxins You know, early 70s toxins were there. When were you born? Jonathan Early nineties. Yeah, exactly. So much more toxic world that you were born into.

And so your generation, we see a lot more of this. I mean now like for me it's middle aged, you know, deficiency syndrome, you know, it's young, youthful. And it's probably happening even more now, ten years younger than me, you know, oh. My, my daughter, my daughter's generation. Now I'm, you know, she's 18. And, you know, I can see I can see the toxic effects in her body. And we're constantly working towards eliminating that. And we live in a toxic world. So. Okay, so now you've established that you needed a solution here, right?

Like you miss you misunderstood food. You misunderstood what food was for you. You trusted you trusted big food. You did what was out there. You trusted what was in the grocery store like we all do until we don't right. Until we open up our eyes and realize, oh, I got to take control of this or right. So food is such a big deal because we have to eat every day. Most of us eat at least three times a day or more. Okay, so keep going. What happened next? Yeah. So food was like a very like it was a very pivotal thing for me that happened with my grandparents.

I moved out of my parents house and I got really sick and I got my grandfather sick. He was in his late eighties and he was very upset with me about getting him sick. And like, it's awful to see someone of that age. It's like super, super sick. Like, you know, it could be deadly for them. And I went to the store, I don't know what I did. I went to like Whole Foods or something and I like got a few supplements and I don't know why I did that. I was like, I want to try something new. And I actually built something like the stuff that I took then would be nothing that I would do now, but like I did feel a difference whether it was in my head or whatnot.

That's what kind of it was, was initial spark for me. But I went on a journey realizing that eating excess sugar, I mean, everything eventually could be okay and balance. But eating excess sugar was a huge, huge problem for me because any time we eat the sugar, I would get a slump, a crash. I feel really weird. Days later, especially when I started to cut it out of my diet, it got worse. And maybe that's something that you see with people is like once you start eliminating stuff, the reactions you have like from like the withdrawal is awful.

And as some. People give up, they're like, This sucks. I feel worse. Why am I eating better? And I feel worse because now you're detoxing because the food that you're eating is actually healing and it's actually starting to pull toxins off your body. You're actually having a herxheimer reaction. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I didn't know anyone at the time. I was doing all my own researching stuff myself and like I was like going through it was misery. Like absolute misery. Like I was pretty much dysfunctional for like days on end.

And then it's like you eat like the bread or the or the sugar and you feel a little bit better, like you feel like you're not going so crazy. So I was on a vicious cycle, but I was also a perfectionist, so I was like, Oh, I can't do this, I can't do that. But I was very passionate about chocolate and sweets and desserts. Like I was still making them for my business at the time. I was making sugary stuff of caramel brownies, and. Then you had a business where you made sweet stuff and sold. It. Yes, yes. Oh, my gosh.

This is like such a cool story because what you create now and what you sell now is a 180 degrees from where you started. Yeah, the original a weighty, long story. But the original idea was to open a pie shop and thank goodness it didn't work out. But that's a whole other long story. And it's not just the health journey that that didn't happen because of, but I was really upset. I really loved the artisan pastry because it brings us together, you know, food brings us together. It's one of those things where it's like you make a really delicious pastry, chocolate, whatever it is, and it brings the whole family, whole group, people together to share the food.

So it's something that you, you know, if you get super hyper obsessed with your health or you're like, Oh, I only eat this and this and this, you could almost isolate yourself. And that could be a problem, too. Okay. Can I just add to this right now? So the huge point that Jonathan is making right now, and this is a very unpopular opinion that I'm about to share with you, and I could get haters for saying this, but in my community, in my programs, working with my clients, we de-emphasize food. In the beginning, I don't even put a huge emphasis on it because we all come from different cultures.

I work with people around the world, you know, I work with people who are from India and people who are from South America and people who are from Canada. People are from Europe and and everybody has a different. So I can't write a recipe guide or a eating structure for people because they have they like what they like. But also one of the most important parts of your healing is being in relationship and community. And we, our families are so food centric that if we start pulling food away, it starts destroying relationships and causing friction.

So we actually don't even focus on that until about a month into somebody's healing process where they start feeling better, their energy starts going up, their gut starts coming back online. Yes, I can start getting your gut online without focusing on food so much. But what happens is when people start to feel better now, they start looking around for, Oh, this is what's possible. Maybe if I shifted some of these foods that I'm eating, it could get even better. And you will not really start doing that.

The other thing I want to share with before I give you the floor back here is and I learned this from a famous diet doctor and I always give him credit for this. Dr. Stephen Gallo. He taught me substitution, not deprivation. So I teach that in my community that you have to find substitute actions. I don't want you to deprive yourself of chocolate. If chocolate is your thing, we need to find a substitution that leaves you feeling like you had something decadent, like you had something satisfying.

Like you got to have the thing without feeling. Like you've let go of one of your favorite things. And even to this day, you know, with everything I know, I probably eat chocolate every day. I do. I eat something, you know, sweet and indulgent every day. So okay. So I want to focus on sugar and the problem that it's causing with our recovery process, our nervous system, our cortisol levels. I know this is something you know a lot about and it really shapes kind of the foundation of what your company's mission is.

So let's talk about that. Yeah. So sugar is it's not necessarily bad, right? Like so sugar is we can't go completely zero sugar in our body like it's sugar is not like the enemy. But if we have a lot of these like parasites, yeast, etc. in our body, then it is one of the number one ways to feed that stuff. And the more you feed it, the worse it gets. The more you try to kill it off while you're feeding it. It becomes a very, very vicious cycle. And of course, sugar is more or less an empty calorie.

It's not obviously not good for your metabolism. Not good for really. I mean, there are so many reasons on that, you sugar. And I mean, you can just look at where diabetes going, where insulin sensitivity is going. It's just not it's just not a good thing to have in your body in a very small amount could alter your metabolism for the rest of the day. So it's just not it's not something that you want to really put your calories towards if you're trying to feel better and be healthy.

Reinventing Chocolate as a Functional Food 12:00

Obviously, chocolate is traditionally made with sugar, but the reason why people say dark chocolate is healthier is because it has more chocolate and less sugar. There's not really much of a difference in when it comes to chocolate, when it between how much sugar is in there. Let me rephrase it. It's like, you know, dark chocolate is not some different chocolate. It's not like milk chocolate and dark chocolate or some different type of chocolate. It's just literally the sugar content and that makes a dramatic difference.

So that's what that's what I realize. I sort of fall in love with dark chocolate because of that low sugar content. But for me, at my phase where I was at, I still felt terrible when I was eating even the smallest amount of sugar, especially when I was really getting deeper into the detox. So I had this idea where it's like, how could I like satisfy that sweet tooth without going backwards? Because for me, like, I was such a perfectionist trying to get the sugar my and I cut it out and every other way.

But when it came to like, I'd be walking in the aisles of the grocery store and just like, you know, go to look at the chocolate, you know, for me, it was more than addiction. It was like a passion, right? So I was like, I want to give up that passion for sweets completely, but I'm going down the aisle grocery store and I'm looking and I'm like, I don't know, anyone can relate to this, but it's like it's almost like my mind was overrode by my addiction to the sugar, which you know, as you know, is more addictive than a lot of there are plenty of studies on this that like mice will choose sugar over food until they die, like they will literally continue to eat the sugar over water, over everything else. And then they'll literally.

Here's what I'm envisioning you doing right now at the grocery store so I can see you going down the aisles and I can see you picking up the marinara sauce. Nope. That has sugar in it. Picking up the bread, reading the label? Nope. That has sugar in it. Picking up the salad dressing, reading the label? Nope. That has sugar in it. But going down the chocolate aisle and being like, There's got to be something here that I can have. I'm going to have this. Yeah, yeah. And then you're like, Well, this one's 95%.

Maybe I'll, I'll, maybe I'll do this one. Oh. We've all done it. I've done it. I've sat there and looked like what's the lesser of two evils here I'll take this one. Oh really. Totally. And I love, you know, and I love chocolate. So it's one of those things where it's like, I think that a good goal is to get your body to a point where you can handle a little bit of sugar. You know, that was one thing I want to mention about the community thing is to go back a little bit. My initial goal was just to feel good, right?

I wanted to feel better, want to have a clear mind, want to do the things I wanted to do in life. I wanted to build, accomplish the things I want to accomplish without the resistance that my health issues were causing. But I you know, I realized that there are other pieces. Once you start feeling better, there's other things that matter right in life, like, you know, you want to be able to enjoy those things and not go backwards. So that's where I totally re-engineered my entire business, like what I was doing with sweets and stuff because like when I was selling those less than healthy sweets, I would, I was researching how sugar is bad for you.

Also, I'm the stuff and I live, I go to people and be like, yeah, you know, like there's all these problems of sugar. I start talking about the problems of sugar and why you should not eat sugar and not eat, you know, the, you know, the carbohydrates and all that. And I would literally be like, You don't wanna buy this, do you? So your little ethical dilemma, you're selling sugar, but you're also understanding the danger of sugar is what I hear you saying. You had an ethical dilemma and so you had to solve it.

So so we know that sugar spikes, cortisol levels, which spikes blood sugar levels which harms many systems in the body, adrenal hormones, neurotransmitter production, I mean, it disrupts your gut so clearly there's a huge connection there. Now, let's talk about when you decided to create Living Ratio and you decided to create a what I would call a functional food. Right, a functional chocolate. That is actually good for you. What kind of ingredients did you know that you had to put in there? So let's talk about that, because it isn't just chocolate.

You have things like ashwagandha in there. So when we're talking about the nervous system and brain support and stress reduction, because we're talking a lot about stress reduction on this summit as well, ashwagandha actually helps with the biological response that the body has to stress. So could you talk about some of the things that you decided to do with the chocolate company? Totally, totally. So that was a later product, right? That was something on my second phase of my health journey, I had a fire or I lost everything in a fire.

And that caused a lot of like destruction of the nervous system, like even the small stuff. Like I used to not sweat the small stuff I could handle most stress, but after that pivotal moment in my life, I could not handle stress so well. So I started research like, well, what can I do for my nervous system? What can I do that could keep my cortisol low so that even if I hadn't interacted or I faced a stressful situation, then I wouldn't necessarily go off the rails because cortisol over time is so damaging.

It's so, so damaging for our health when it's out of control. It's also an essential function in the body. But when it gets out of control, it's very, very devastating, especially, you know, when it comes to just your you just how you feel on a daily basis. You know, I know for me, like I never had anxiety in my life, but once I had those that stress regulation was out of whack, it was terrible. So I thought entrepreneurs probably one of the best things it's one of the best research and most widely taken supplements are herbs, diabetic herbs.

The history of using it goes back thousands of years and it's probably the most researched and best option for lowering cortisol. Just regulating cortisol. It has a bunch of other benefits too, like hormone regulation and mental focus and all of that. So it's one of those adaptogenic herbs that you can take quite a lot of and not have any negative side effects. So I found offshore Ghana is one of the things that, you know, if we can make it taste good in the chocolate, which we did, is one of the things that you can take every single day has a cumulative benefit and that's where I made our chocolate drink mix because most of it should.

I forgot to taste bad. And that's like that was part of my passion. I was making something tasted good because it had sugar in it. I wanted to make something that tastes good, that didn't have sugar in it, which is hard. And a lot of people like you can find those things. You can go to like a target or a Walmart and find sugar free products and taste good. But they're going to have like sclerosis, which is terrible. And there's so many products that have it still or they're going to have aspartame or something like that.

That's just it just totally wrecks our health. So I wanted to make something that actually taste good but did not have a single ingredient and there that was going to compromise are going to cause a problem. So I've tried this chocolate. Do you have that around you? Somewhere in your office is like, I want to show this. Speaker an empty back. So that's the cocoa com and so I you know, I tried this and I was blown away. It tasted like chocolate milk. You could you mix it with coconut milk or almond milk or if you don't have a dairy issue, don't mix it with regular milk.

And it was better than it was. It was better than anything I had ever had from a like a homemade chocolate milk perspective. I was blown away like you told me it was going to be good, but I wasn't expecting how good. I think at this point I'm just very like our other chocolates. Like we have different flavors, if you like it, you might like it. If you don't, you don't. But with this product, I'm like, this is the best tasting chocolate drink makes you. Can you sure for your time when you show that bag again while you talk because they'll they'll only see it while you're talking because we're you know, speaker view on this.

So go ahead and explain it while you show it. Sure, sure. So this has us break down the ingredients now because it's very, very simple. I think we only have like seven ingredients in there. And the secret to the flavor is the vanilla that we use. We use the vanilla that is basically the where the old people in the world using this particular vanilla is from a small farm in Madagascar. And it's interesting cause vanilla and chocolate are both fermented foods so good. Vanilla is properly fermented.

The flavor is developed through the fermentation process. Vanilla is actually an orchid. It's a very interesting plant, but it's one of the few plants that has Flavanols that interact with the endocannabinoid system so much like CBD or anything like that. But now is like one of the only other things that has that interface. So vanilla has a psychological, you know, actual effect on our nervous system in our body. So that's why maybe that's why my body loved it so much, because it was in. A lot of no on here. It's there's no other product in it.

Like we're the only people using that vanilla. I know that for a fact. Also for the sweetness we use monk fruit which monk fruit is probably the safest and probably the best sweetener that we can possibly use. No, not probably. It is period. End of subject. You're like. Stop. And that was a it's also an interesting thing because a lot of people have tried monk fruit and they've had a bitter aftertaste. It didn't taste good. It's a lot of time to find a monk fruit. What's that? You've cut with something, wasn't it?

Well, it could be something. Or it could be a lot of it's chemical maltodextrin. But the most common thing actually is just poor harvesting like or like timing because monk fruit only grows in China. It's a very fragile it's not bad that it comes from China, but it's very fragile fruit. It's like a grape. It grows on vines just the same way as a vineyard. Like grapes grow in a vineyard. Same exact appearance. Like if you saw a monk fruit field look the same as a is a vineyard. But monk fruit, if it's harvested at the wrong time, it's going to have a bad taste.

It's just really is it's really as simple as that. It's just like wine or something like that. It's the grapes are picked the wrong time in the wrong way. I know there's a lot of nuances with that.

Ingredients, Sourcing, and Clean Sweeteners 22:00

I like to pick it at 3 a.m. or something. So the sugars are a certain point with wine. So monkfish is very similar. So it took me a long time to track down a monk for that had that flavor profile because if you taste a pure monk free extract, which monk extract is made literally by juicing the monk fruit, filtering it multiple times and then drying it out. It's not made with chemicals. It's not made like, for example, super roaster. I always like to pick off because it's so common and like, you know, like Quest Bars or anything like that.

So it's very replaceable. For Sugar, Sucralose is literally a chemical process where they attach chlorine to sucrose like it's literally chlorinated sucrose and that that it has been proven to kill your gut bacteria, which makes sense because it's literally chlorinated sugar and it's like boiling mine how somebody could know that and still eat it. It's like it just maybe there's not a lot of like, you know, thousands of studies showing why it's bad, but there's enough is enough to lead us to believe that it is very toxic.

So I love food for that reason, but I could go on and on on each ingredient because everything we do that's my passion is sourcing, finding the cleanest ingredients. I want to make sure every single thing has a purpose and a benefit and is the best it possibly can be. It might cost a little bit more, but for me, I want to I want to show an example of what everything done to the highest level. So this is precisely why I'm bringing you into this community and talking about your products, because I vet everything that I bring in and I make sure that it is not going to create any kind of toxic load in people's bodies.

And this is where your perfectionism that you mentioned earlier is so beautiful. This is where perfectionism works to your advantage. Now, perfectionism can also be quite damaging to people because those is hard to achieve. But this is where we love perfectionists. In the few minutes we have left in this first part of our talk, I want to make sure we talk about some of the other products, because in my community we're wanting to give people winds on on starting to shift their eating and mindset and relationship with food so that it becomes natural and it becomes easy and they never feel deprived.

So I want to talk about these guys. Yeah. As you guys are half gone because and I've been covering them for this interview so, so that I could show them and I literally have to prevent myself from eating these. But it was boxes that was that the autumn boxers at the holiday about. The autumn box. So as I have this under my nose, I smell pumpkin I smell like pumpkin spices. So if you're like a pumpkin spice lot and you don't want the chemicals, this is where to go, right? So I'm on pumpkin everything. And I'm this was the fall box.

So it had like hazelnut and pumpkin and all kinds of all flavors. And then I know that. So at the time of filming this, right now, it's it's December. And so I know your your holiday box has come out. What's in that? So the holiday box. This is the label. I love this label. Yeah. Cute. What's in there? What have we have an eggnog flavor. We have gingerbread, we have Orange Spice, which is really a cool one. And then we have a sea salt, dark chocolate. We absolutely love everything that our truffle collections are sugar free.

They're clean. They're usually the best ingredients, like in the last box with the hazelnut, we use the hazelnut from a small farm in Oregon and we're using like mass sourced, like fighting the very, very best elements, you know, everything we do and this. But I just want to say, like the artistry of this, like this is oops, you have to put it here. So this is so beautiful just the way it's I mean as a gift, right? When you gift that. And then this one had salt on it. And I love the salt. It's just they're artisanal, you know, chocolates and everything's hand-decorated.

That's everything. Like the orange on that truffle. It's decorated, that's turmeric. That's not food dye. And I was like, you know, if you go to Europe and you find those, like, really fancy little bonbons, they're all colored with dyes and titanium dioxide and this and that. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to create the same experience without all of the things that were not good. So it's a very complicated and obsessed product, but we've been doing this long enough that we have like over 100 flavors. So what I do is I rotate every single month, like we do a different collection.

So in January we're going to focus on medicinal mushroom. So we're going to focus on reishi mushroom cholla mushroom, cordyceps, mushroom and lion's mane mushroom. So it'll be four flavors. Each flavor will feature a different mushroom and also a different, you know, like this. The Cordyceps is an almond butter with cinnamon. It's like a cinnamon almond butter truffle. The lion's mane has macadamia nuts that are crunchy in there. Everything has its own, like the chaga is has hazelnut, and there are that one we have a chocolate hazelnut was different one, but we have we have a chocolate that's like a creamy center.

So there's all these different all these different flavors and versions. But every month we try to make something really special, like this one, for example, Valentine's Day, we're going to do Rose Raspberry, strawberry, hazelnut and a dark chocolate sea salt. So every month we're using different and it varies year on year, but we have this very limited collection released and it sells out like sometimes in days, sometimes in a week, but it always sells out really, really fast. This is cool. You have the standard stuff that you can get every day of chocolate bars.

You have the cocoa powder that you can make, you know, comforting drinks and satisfying drinks out of. And then you have this collection of truffles that just comes up every month. And okay, so I know everybody's knowing how do we get this? And we're going to we're going to pause here. We're going to share people how to get it, and we're going to continue this conversation. So now there is a clickable link on this page where you're watching this video where you can go to Living Ratio. And then also where can we find Living Ratio if people just want to go type it in? Sure.

So you can go livingratio.com, but for you guys, we're doing a special with the holiday collection or another holiday question to the exclusive truffle membership. So if you want to be a member, it's $20 off your first month. So that's the that that's what we're doing for you guys because it's. The link that they click on. Any of the summit pages will just take them directly to that, right? Yes. Yes. Okay, perfect. So it's all embedded. They don't need a coupon code. Nothing. Oh, okay. Perfect. You see, I love that you make everything so easy.

Perfectionism is possible. Yes. So, Jonathan, I want to thank you so much for joining us today for this talk on chocolate, functional chocolate and nervous system and how you can make food healthy and fun and, you know, have a substitution instead of deprivation to our audience. I hope you found our conversation fun and insightful and helpful. If you're a summit purchaser, stay right here, because we're about to dove even deeper into this discussion with Jonathan. If you're not, click on the button on this page to get access to a continuation of this conversation and many others and get the tools you need to reclaim your health.

Thank you. See you as I say. Okay, hold on. Hold on. It needs to come back to me. We're going to keep going. So if you're watching this continuation of my talk with Kat. Sorry, let me do this again. Okay, pause. Here we go. If you're watching this continuation of my talk with Jonathan Pantalis, thank you for being a valuable member of our community. We're going to dove right back in. So, Jonathan, we were just talking about the truffles. We were talking about the the cocoa powder. We didn't actually get into the chocolate bars.

And, you know, as we're talking, you're starting to reveal some of the very special ingredients that you put into these products and what they do. I mean, I didn't even realize that that it was tumor much on top of this until just now. And so I find this very meaningful that you so that you curate these products. So in such a special way that everything is functional, everything is supportive. So can we talk about some of the other things that you've created that and what you've put in them? So I have right here, I've got the the coconut cream chocolate.

There's only one tiny little piece left in this because it's really hard to not eat it. I think this may be one of my favorite ones. I was really good known as very special. So that one we use, we grind. We found the best coconut in the world because that's what we do. We try to find the best in everything but a lot of coconut when it's dry it actually the press that that that's how coconut oil is made so you're not really getting a whole coconut. You're not getting all the fat and it can sometimes be rancid.

So we find the freshest full fat, shredded, dried coconut that's just like gently dried. And then we add in our in our factory, we take that shredded coconut and we go through this really slow stone milling process

Truffles, Seasonal Collections, and Product Showcase 31:00

where the coconut is rolled over stone at low temperatures for like four days until it turns into like this completely creamy, silky coconut butter. And it doesn't have like a coconut taste. Like, I don't know how to describe it. It's like a very creamy, very subtle flavor. So if you don't like it, a strong coconut flavor, which I actually don't like. Like coconut at all, I can't even tell when I'm in it. And it's funny because it says 55% coconut cream chocolate. So I'm expecting it to taste like coconut and there's zero coconut essence.

Yeah, it's not it's not a strong coconut taste at all. It's much to do with the quality, the coconut. The quality, the fat in there. And there's that gentle process. We're not like when you cook it, it kind of brings out that coconut flavor, right? When you have to overprocessed, it brings out more of that coconut flavor. And then there's different types of coconut, right? But that's the type we choose is just has this really subtle, creamy like essence to it. Now the other part of it that I didn't mention much is the chocolate itself, like the period of chocolate matters a lot.

And a lot of companies are just sourcing like milk, like whatever, like just this huge, huge mass produced chocolate that they shipped over in burlap bags. It might get exposed to moisture and humidity along the way. Mold mycotoxins grow into something and. It's actually I've been in this for long enough that I can actually taste if there's mold or what type of bacteria might be in there because like chocolate is a fermented food. Right. So just to backtrack a little bit more, the process of chocolate is the bean.

The the pods are harvested inside the cocoa pod are beans. Right. And the cocoa beans are actually coated in this. This it's like a pole. Right. Is it because pulpy white pulp that is high in sugar actually traditional. We like some cultures, they actually just eat the pulp and spit out the beans that we value so much. It's kind of fun. But but anyways, that pulp is actually like the pulp is kept on the beans and then that's spread out usually on out in the sun and it goes through this fermentation process.

So it actually goes through a lactic acid fermentation, acetic acid. And then eventually the acetic acid bacteria die when ethanol starts to take over, just like alcohol or any other, any other fermentation. Right. So that actually a fermented food. But if it's not done right, then there can be other molds that grow in there. And I can actually personally I can taste that in different chocolate. Like sometimes penicillin. So like, you know, maybe not as harmful of a mold is not, you know, but you can kind of taste that more like penicillin mold that's like maybe like blue cheese or something like that.

And what a lot of the big jar companies do is they go through this process of of like winnowing and crunching and all this that that basically cook off those bad flavors. It doesn't always work. But basically the basically, like the the the poor quality beans will often have a very acidic flavor to them or they'll have like a moldy mildew flavor to them. So what we do differently is we actually just get beans that are properly fermented and then quickly dried and turned into nibs at the source, because then they can be shipped, sealed, airtight and fresh versus like the pot, the beans out, basically the player has to be reactivated by roasting them.

We don't roast them now. They're dried at a temperature that's high enough that can kill the bacteria. But there is no like over roasting over processing that can cause all sorts of well, not cause, but it can actually make like an inferior chocolate taste better and. That's that was necessary back in the day when, you know, like Hershey's and all these big companies were making you. Name it out. Jonathan Let's talk about yeah, I. Mean, well, I mean, that's actually I was researching the history of Hershey's not too long ago.

This is actually fresh in my mind, but that's actually literally what what they figured out is chocolate was not able to be mass produced until they cracked the code on that. And so that's when all these other methods started to become necessary in the chocolate production process, because the the beans are just not as good quality. They had to get mass quantities, so the mass quantities had to be processed in a way that they could make it taste good and the other piece, besides roasting, is launching, which is when the chocolate is for multiple days exposed oxygen.

So they're intentionally oxidizing the chocolate, which is, you might know, oxidizing anything that has a lot of fat and there's probably not good for it. So they're intentionally exposing the chocolate to tons of air and heat to burn off and cook off all of these bad flavor notes. So there's all these different pieces of the chocolate making process that are just totally unnecessary. If you start with the right stuff, right? If you're starting with quality first. So just to break down our method, one more time with the chocolate, we start with properly fermented beans that are peeled and dried at the source seal fresh and then shipped to us.

We take those fresh nibs and we grind them in a stone grinder for like two or three days at very low temperatures until it's silky smooth. Then we might add the coconut cream to it, sweeteners, etc. But it's a very delicate, very gentle process. And there are very few companies that do it this way. A lot of companies do like a bean bar method or a little bit different or more like the two bar. But it's very important for us to control the process. I don't really know of any other company on the market.

It doesn't exactly like we're doing it. A lot of them are getting liquor or paste from the source and then they're blending in the sweeteners from there. But for us, we want to control the whole process because we can actually control the flavor and the consistency when we grind it by stone ourself. And that's a traditional way to make chocolate is stone grinding it. So one is better nutrition in flavor too. It's actually just like the nutrition, the traditional method that just makes I don't know if just there's a magic to it and you can taste of our passion.

Like to hear like a true chocolatier talk about his craft and how special this is. People don't realize this what goes into making a high quality, really artisanal product that doesn't harm your body, that actually is good for you, supports your nervous system, supports your detox and your healing goals, and gives you that kind of indulgent, that indulgent little special treat. And you can I mean, I can these are so good. I can eat like one or two and I'm good. I don't need to sit here and eat a box because they're so.

Yeah. I will say one more thing. So the reason why our chocolates are so filling too is the the center of them.

How to Get Living Ratio Chocolate 38:00

We use MCT oil in most of them. And MCT oil helps with, you know, as you probably know a lot of things, I know exactly what you teach but as you know, the the topic acid is actually good for killing off a lot of the yeast in the body and also provides the quicker energy from fat. So absolutely your mitochondria need those, you know, fatty acids to produce energy. It's much more effective energy source than carbohydrates. So in the last few moments that we have here, any final words you'd like to say?

I mean, I'm just so thrilled that we connected that you've created something that doesn't harm my people. Right? It doesn't harm my family, my community, my patients, and that they can really feel good about having. There's zero guilt with this whatsoever because it's food and it's really processed in a way that is thoughtful and and safe. So what would you like to say? Your final words to our audience, who I'm sure has been hanging on this every word of this whole chocolate process? Well, I. I could go on and on about the ingredients, but I think that it's one of those things where if if you try our chocolate, you'll realize that it's one of those it's one of those things that it can allow you to enjoy life and, you know, months down the road in your journey, you'll realize that, you know, adding those little things like raw cacao like like it cacao calm which is a very easy drink add into your coffee at tea added to you need to.

Put it in coffee it makes a mocha. Yeah you know how versatile it is. So whether it's adding this in or just keeping a box of this handy so you're not, you know, a victim to cravings, you know, so you're not going to go and grab chips or growing absolutely. Out one or two of these truffles. You'll realize that just having these tools is going to make it so much easier that months from now you'll be able to be on track with your health goals and then you're not compromising, not compromising, but you're also not depriving.

And it's so important I want you to build, enjoy life. And I think chocolate is a wonderful part of life. So why why go without if you can actually have benefits? We don't even talk about benefits, chocolate, but I know we don't have time, but maybe we'll do it again soon. Well, I bet you they can find about the benefits of chocolate on your website, which is. This is true. This is true. It's livingratio.com So then what see is that for people to get their $20 off membership. And you. Can click.

Click a link click the links on this on these summit pages and it's automatically applied. You can get their their truffle membership, which is what I've got here, which is so good. And thank you so much, Jonathan, for pouring in. You know, at the time that this airs, it's going to be February. It's going to be just past just past Valentine's Day. But I know you've got exciting stuff coming up for March, April, May. Do you have it? Can you give a hint of any of the things that coming? Do you know yet?

Are you still in the know? April We usually do lemon cream and then March. It's like I believe it's Mother's Day, right? So we have like I think we have a or is it may. May is mother's. Amazingly so in March we'll be like probably like a spring themed box. I don't think we have the flavor set yet. But April, we kind of do the same thing where it's like lemon cream and vanilla bean. Oh, my God, I want the milk chocolate. It's kind of we're trying to make an Easter deal with it, but we'll probably have strawberry coconut butter coming back in this time of year.

Well, strawberry hazelnut will probably have a few other very interesting flavors coming. We will have some limited releases. So we do limited releases. The sell right out like they're available for a day or so. And then we have our monthly collection, which are, you know, they last maybe a little few days longer. But anyways, we'll we'll definitely have a bunch of new stuff and exciting flavors and I can't wait to share with everyone so good. Thank you so much. Until next time, everyone take good care.

Bye now. Bye.