Vital Purple vs. Black Forest Cocoa Flavanols: Flavanols, Nutrition, Heavy Metal Testing

In recent years, looking toward dark chocolate and high flavanol cocoa powder as substitutes for the daily caffeine boost provided by commercial coffee and chocolate has become a more and more popular phenomenon. Many brands have arrived on the market, some focusing more on the health and performance benefits the superfood has been shown to help provide, and others stressing cacao intake as more of a spiritual practice. Some advertise cacao grown in different climate regions for different desired effects, some tout special processing methods, and some even contain additives as seen in niches such as mushroom cacao.

With purity, sourcing, flavanol content, and heavy metal content and testing transparency being just some of the metrics to compare against, however, it can be difficult to know which one is truly the best overall. That’s why, today, we’re comparing Vital Purple head-to-head with another popular brand, Black Forest Cocoa Flavanols. Read on for an in-depth look at how the two brands stack up:

Most people drink high flavanol cocoa or high flavanol cacao with the intent to gain cardiovascular benefits, while also having a nice experience paired along with it. So how can we make an objective comparison among the two brands? Well, we can go based on a collection of user reviews between the two. 

Users of Black Forest Cocoa Flavanols boast that it has a familiar chocolatey flavor, while being smooth and easy. It mixes easy and is an easy powder to play around with. Easy come, easy go, which a lot of people enjoy and it still retains the antioxidants. 

Vital Purple on the other hand is a polarizing product. It boasts an experience that it is much more rich, because of the higher fat content, and it is much more bitter. It is not sterilized through high temperature roasting, and then recombined with a flavanol extract. It's a whole product, it's a whole food. The origin cacao bean has about 45% fat. Vital Purple retained a much higher fat in the cacao for the health aspect and because it more closely resembles and respects the actual food it comes from. The non oxidized vegan fat assists your body in assimilating the micronutrients. Also, fat and caffeine work in synergy for brain activity.

What's the straight up difference? Black Forest Cocoa Flavanols is excellent for people new to cocoa as a healthy food and want something fluid and easy to consume. It's light, easy to mix, and makes an excellent addition to your morning coffee because of the familiar flavor and antioxidant profile. 

Vital Purple is for people who already have explored pure cacao, and are familiar with the different flavor and fat profiles that come along with cacao and do not look at these as a burden. An understanding of cacao takes time, and Vital Purple offers a sophisticated, complicated, bitter flavor profile that cannot be mimicked. It's a unique ingredient, and it's designed around respecting the natural state of high flavanol cacao. It's not designed to be a tasty amazon product.

If you’ve read any of our other blogs or researched elsewhere on organic cacao, you’ll know that flavanols are nutrient-rich compounds found naturally in the cacao crop which are remarkably high in antioxidants. Years of research into these compounds and the cacao products that contain them in high concentration has supported their health benefits in areas such as the heart, brain, blood and more. Consuming up to 1,000 mg daily can improve focus and memory while helping reduce age-based cognitive decline, and may contribute to reduced risk of chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. This is why, when talking about organic cocoa and pure cacao as health foods, flavanol count is one of the most important metrics people look to. Just because it is 100% cacao, it does not mean there are any health benefits.  

Vital Purple’s flagship cacao energy nibs contain 900 mg of flavanols per serving, the closest to the 1,000 mg maximum daily target on the market. And though Black Forest advertises 1200 mg of “flavanols + flavonoids" for their product, being broken down into 600 mg each, this does not make them the outright winner. Flavonoids are the larger, more diverse group of compounds flavanols belong to, and while they often carry many of the same health benefits, flavanols are special for being uniquely bioavailable, or able to be absorbed and utilized by our bodies. In terms of flavanols, Vital Purple still leads the market.

Besides this Vital Purple also has Anthocyanins and Superoxide dismutase as well. Two rare antioxidants. 

When looking to organic cocoa powder and high flavanol cacao for its myriad health effects, just as important as its flavanol content is the way it is processed. Most commercial chocolate and cocoa powder undergoes processes such as high-temperature roasting and alkalization (also called “dutch-processing”) intended to reduce natural bitterness and make it suitable for applications such as baking, but this destroys much of its antioxidant capacity as well. High flavanol cocoa powder forgoes the alkalization step in order to preserve flavanols, but many brands still employ roasting and fermentation rather than keeping their product as raw and nutrient-dense as the plant it comes from.

Vital Purple, through replacing roasting and fermentation entirely with its special drying process, keeps the high flavanol cacao truly raw in order to fully preserve its nutrients as well as its natural purple hue, which is a specific antioxidant called an Anthocyanin. The pure cacao powder minimal processing allows it to retain the strong antioxidant compounds that contribute not only to the greatest health effects, but to the color, texture, and flavor of the cacao pod as well. Black Forest Cocoa Flavanols, by contrast, through its light roasting and fermentation, loses some of that nutrient density while also being a bit more characteristic of traditional cocoa powder. Which is where, most likely, an extract is added back to the mix, which constitutes this as a product more than a food. However, there is a strong advantage to this in regards to microbes. The only way to reduce the microbes such as mold and yeast the most is to high temperature roast the material. In a side by side comparison, Black Forest Cocoa Flavanols offer lower microbes, but Vital Purple microbe levels are still safe. 

Another aspect of organic and high flavanol cacao that’s come under scrutiny as of late is its natural levels of heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. These occur due to absorption from the soil where cacao plants are grown, and are practically impossible to fully remove for brands that stay committed to keeping their product organic and nutritionally pure. Best High Flavanol Cocoa Powder brands in the space space undergo safety testing for this exact reason, and should be held to a standard of continually publishing updated results of this testing to their respective sites. 

That way, consumers will know exactly what they’re putting in their bodies, and that these heavy metal levels comply with what most jurisdictions consider safe.

For more information on why heavy metals in cacao are rarely a major concern, read our full blog on the subject here.

After due diligence, both brands are well within the safety guidelines for heavy metals. 

As you can see, other organic and high flavanol cacao brands strive for similar levels of nutrient density, so is there an objective winner? The sad, non answer (ew), is preference. Will the total flavonoid total gap between make a real difference in your health? Debatable. Both serve a purpose for people to get in their cocoa flavanols in a tasty way, it's just that Vital Purple High Flavanol Cocoa Powder offers a whole ingredient without an added extract with a creamier drink, and more full feeling after. The fat is usually removed and sold for higher margins.  

Simply put, Vital Purple is the world’s first and only pure, raw, ceremonial cacao made with a focus on preserving the plant’s natural purple hue. Vital Purple did the work in the pre-process, the fermentation block to preserve the cocoa flavanols. Black Forest Cocoa Flavanols most likely did their work on the back end, re-adding the cacao flavanol extract back into the high temperature roasted cocoa. Vital Purple is focused on natural antioxidant retention, while the other has created a good product in post production.  

Writer / Researcher: Trey Norbey