If someone approached you on the street and offered you a Rolex watch for $50, you’d be suspicious, right? That’s a recipe for a rip-off.

Apply the same sensibility to buying cacao: ensure you’re buying from a trustworthy source...you wouldn't want to be eating chocolate contaminated with pathogens, would you?

There are plenty of companies out there that buy their beans and nibs by the container-load, and never bother to learn anything about the source – the kind of conditions the cacao is grown in, the care that is taken in the fermentation process, or how well or poorly the workers are treated.

The best companies actually know that the cacao they’re providing you is absolutely pure and clean.

In the case of raw cacao, you want to go to the company that invented raw cacao: Essential Living Foods.

Back in 2001, master nutritionist David Wolfe had a vision: a world where you could enjoy all the healthy, nutritious, mood-lifting benefits of fresh cacao beans...without having to fly to the jungle.

He approached Dr. Christopher Daugherty, agriculture expert and founder of Essential Living Foods. Wolfe asked if it was possible to create a truly raw, unprocessed chocolate, unlike anything else on the planet. This simple question sparked a revolution.

Daugherty and Wolfe traveled the world, from the finest chocolatiers of Europe to the World Cacao Bank in Africa to remote small farms in the highlands of Ecuador, doing ground-breaking research into the true history of the magical chocolate bean.

Many chocolatiers said a raw cacao couldn't be made, since cacao is usually fermented in open jungle conditions, where it can be exposed to all sorts of contaminants.

Not only that, all the experts insisted that chocolate wouldn't taste good without extensive fermenting and roasting. But Daugherty and Wolfe knew that these processes heavily degraded the powerful nutrients found in the raw cacao bean, and they continued on their quest for the ideal variety of cacao.

They finally found it in the lush jungles of Ecuador, the finest aromatic heirloom variety - Cacao Nacional Arriba Fino de Aroma. Not only was it higher in powerful nutrients than most other cacao varieties, it was resistant to many of the blights that had driven cacao farmers to rely on expensive and toxic pesticides.

Through close collaboration with a collective of 1200 family farmers, Daugherty was able to develop the ideal organic cultivation and ultra-clean, low-temperature process, in order to create the modern world's very first raw chocolate.

All of ELF's cacao is proudly grown on small organic family farms, dedicated to improving our planet. These farmers are paid extremely well, almost double the fair trade rate, and they are happy to be working in harmony with nature, rather than fighting it. Instead of using chemical pesticides, they keep away pests simply by growing a variety of trees (there's something inherently imbalanced about single-crop farms that makes it easier for insects to attack).

These farmers also understand that the key to healthy, pest-free trees is rich, living soil, naturally balanced to nourish the hardiest, healthiest trees possible.

This fertile soil and careful cultivation yield one of the richest cacao beans in the world: high in brain-boosting magnesium and mood-lifting anandamide and PEA (nature's "love drug"). They're also rich with epichatechin, the flavonoid that's been linked to enhanced memory function. Not to mention that they're the densest source of antioxidants on the planet (according to rigorous laboratory tests).

ELF's proprietary low-temperature cleaning, drying, and processing technologies keep all these vital nutrients (and their essential enzymes) intact (they also keep the raw beans in extremely clean conditions, instead of being fermented in piles in the open jungle, the way other cacao is.

When making nibs, cacao butter, cacao powder, and cacao paste, it's possible to expose the raw beans to extremely high temperatures, but ELF ensures that their beans are never exposed to temperatures over 118 degrees (and is usually kept below 105).

All this care and hard work helped to create a raw chocolate miracle, bursting with flavor and superfood nutrients to tickle your palate and elevate your spirit.