How are cacao and cocoa different? Which is healthier, cocoa or cacao? Do cocoa and cacao taste the same? and the answer is quite simple: cacao and cocoa are the same word, in different languages.
It’s a bit of a debate in the craft chocolate industry as to the functional differences between the words, but in common usage the difference is difficult to neatly define. This is because legally, cacao and cocoa have the same meaning, and if anyone tells you differently then they’re either trying to sell you on the benefits of cacao as a super food, or they don’t know what they’re talking about. Guaranteed.
The only real difference between cocoa and cacao is in the implication & context of each word in their respective languages. As a result, there can be rather large differences surrounding the common usage of the two words, depending largely on the country. In this article, we dig into how different cultures have changed the implied meaning of cacao or cocoa in various contexts.
Cocoa vs Cacao: What Is Cacao?
“Cacao” is Theobroma cacao, a plant in the Theobroma family, native to South America and grown in Central America for millennia. This cultivation didn’t stop when the plant was taken to new lands and grown elsewhere. Cacao is still a very important food throughout the Americas, not to mention in Africa & Asia. But since cacao is the Spanish butchering of the word, and the former Spanish colonies are the epicenter of cacao culture, it’s their word which has become elevated in recent years.
The Spanish brought a more nuanced cacao varietal to their former colonies, including the Philippines and throughout the Americas. The criollo varietals have a less bitter & more floral and nutty flavor than their hardier forastero counterpart (discussed below). At the time that they were bringing criollo cacao abroad, the Spaniards may not yet have discovered other varietals, but that doesn’t change the impact their choice has had.
It’s led to entirely different consumption patterns, and in general less processing necessary to make it palatable. For roughly a century, in fact, the Spanish managed to keep cacao a secret from the other European powers. Until one day, it all spilled out.
The Spanish had been consuming cacao almost exclusively in the form of an unsweetened spiced cacao beverage, thought to be an aphrodisiac and generally seen as a show of wealth. In Spain and its colonies, in fact, the consumption of cacao was largely either in the form of a prepared cacao drink or on the plantation in the form of a fruit or fruit liquor. In all forms it was very expensive, making it a highly coveted & specialty food.
To this day, Spain’s consumption of cacao is still mostly in the form of liquids, either drinks or sauces. Even in former Spanish colonies, like the Philippines or Guatemala, most cacao-based products are consumed as less-processed drinks. Chocolate, on the other hand, is the name of a sweet imported treat, primarily made of sugar. The irony of this is that thousands of their countrymen make their living growing cacao, only to export it at (almost always) a criminally low price.
The cacao fruit and the products made from lightly-processed cacao seeds taste completely different from the chocolate-flavored candy bars you find in the US and other Western countries. Even though they come from the same plant, on the backs of those bars you’d also most likely see the ingredient “cocoa mass,” not “cacao beans.” These cacao fruits actually taste more like lychee and strawberry, while lightly-processed cacao products taste a little more bitter and much less flat & sweet than grocery store chocolate bars.
Cacao vs Cocoa: What Is Cocoa?
Just like cacao, “cocoa” is the fruit and seeds of Theobroma cacao, a tropical plant native to South America. However, “cocoa” is the English word for the plant, a mangled interpretation of the Spanish word “cacao.” “Cocoa” entered the languages when the plant itself did, also via the Spanish Empire. Since Theobroma cacao is native to the Americas, once the French & British got their hands on parts of the it, they promptly began taking the plant to their other colonies.
But for the most part, in those first few hundred years only the hardier varietal known as forastero, most common in South America, successfully made it across oceans. Eventually cacao made it to Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific, where French, Spanish, British, and Dutch colonies were established. Since they were raising a varietal that was naturally a bit more flat and strong in flavor (not to mention more bitter), their inclination was not towards drinking.
They needed to add something to their hot chocolate to make a heartier product, particularly to counteract the seed’s bitter properties. So they turned to corn starch and other thickeners, as well as a healthy dose of sugar or honey. In many ways this cheapened the product, but it also increased how long each cacao fruit and each bag of cacao beans could last. The French and the British brought cocoa from a high-class beverage to an accessible indulgence for people of most classes.
Europeans’ motivations for consuming cocoa in both liquid and solid forms were very similar to those of the Spanish, but for a host of reasons, the situation surrounding cocoa slowly changed. In the 1800’s, an Englishman named Joseph Fry created the first chocolate bar. While other ingredients were added to the drink, like milk and spices, the food version was just an unsweetened cocoa powder with some sugar & extra cacao butter added in.
Cacao or cocoa, whatever you call it, is about half fat in its natural state. This fat is often pressed out of the cocoa beans and sold as cocoa butter, which is used to make white chocolate and otherwise highly prized in the cosmetics industry. The rest of this cocoa cake is mostly made up of cocoa solids, which are ground into cocoa powder for making chocolate drinks. Later in history, this powder was also added to other desserts as a prized flavoring.
Because of these differing consumption patterns and cultivation choices of the European powers, the connotations of the words “cocoa” and “cacao” have themselves changed. When you think of cacao you likely think of the fruit and the cacao nib. But when you think of cocoa you likely think of cheap chocolate and sweet cocoa drinks, furthering the implied difference between cocoa and cacao.
So…. is cacao actually good for you? Well, that depends completely upon how it was grown and processed. Health food stores would have you believe that the debate is cacao powder vs cocoa powder, villainizing one over the other, when in reality you could call your product either name and be correct. Legally, switching cocoa and cacao doesn’t change the origin or processing of the ingredient. It’s just a stylistic choice.
Cacao trees on Taiwan, just outside of Taichung city.
Hope the myths and facts are clear now!
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