Last week we sent an email saying cacao contained 40% fibre by mass. This was wrong! The truth is that Soma Cacao contains roughly 15-20% fibre by mass (someone pointed out that it actually says so on our packaging).

It happened like this: naive Alistair trusted ChatGPT a little too much. He asked for the fibre content of cacao mass - ChatGPT (which has a robot brain and an all-too-human moral compass) gave him figures for cacao powder, because they were more impressive. Cacao powder is Soma Cacao with the fat stripped (50% of cacao is fat), so the results were roughly twice what they ought to have been.

Here are the facts: each 25-30g serve of Soma Cacao contains 4.5-6g of fibre. 80% of that fibre is insoluble. Insoluble fibre improves gut motility and balance, and helps with appetite control. Each 30g serve of Soma Cacao contains roughly 1g of soluble fibre, especially pectins and mucilages. Soluble fibre feeds the gut microbiome, slows glucose absorption into the blood, and reduces bad cholesterol.

But saying a food contains fibre is like saying it contains vitamins. ‘Dietary fibre’ is an umbrella term that covers hundreds of chemical compounds, each of which has a different function in the gut. It seems the best advice we can give you about fibre is to eat a varied, colourful diet, full of whole foods and superfoods, and enjoy being healthy. It will never hurt to have a little Soma when the mood strikes.

Indeed we did, discerning reader! Cacao is particularly rich in three types of fat: 

• stearic acid, a rare saturated fat which does not increase LDL (bad) cholesterol, and actually increases levels of HDL (good) cholesterol;
• oleic acid, a monounsaturated fatty acid also found in olive oil, known for its heart-protective and anti-inflammatory properties, reducing LDL and increasing HDL cholesterol, and contributing to healthy skin and brain function;
• palmitic acid, a saturated fat necessary for cell health (particularly the integrity of cell walls), immune system modulation and gut barrier function.

The fat in cacao improves nutrient uptake, increases the bioavailability of antioxidant flavonoids and mood-boosting compounds, and helps the transport of nutrients around the body

We’ve come a long way since the 1980s, when everyone seemed to decide that the ‘fats’ in food caused us to get ‘fat.’ Aaron Carrol, a professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine, writes that “Fat consumption does not cause weight gain. To the contrary, it might actually help us shed a few pounds.”

Fat consumption slows digestion and reduces blood sugar spikes, helping us regulate appetite. Fats are essential for cell health and hormonal balance. Dietary fat supports brain health (the brain is 60% fat), as well as immune and gut function.

The human body is so intricate, and food so complex, that it’s dumb to try to trick our systems with clever diets. It seems the best we can do is eat the way nature intended us to: natural whole foods, according to our tastes, when we’re hungry.

At Soma we sell 100% cacao paste, with nothing removed, and nothing added. Until now we haven’t sold cacao powder (though we’re always considering it because it’s useful for baking) because it’s not as rich and healthy (or delicious) as real cacao.

We don’t pretend to understand how cacao works in our bodies. Science can only explain what’s going on, not how. Health is a miracle that statistics about omega fatty acids can only allude to vaguely.

We wish everyone a healthy fibre-fuelled, fat-dreamy, cacao-filled week.

With walnut butter and a little bush honey,