Undressing Cacao: Looking Beyond the Myths, Marketing & Wellness Speak

Ceremonial cacao. Sacred cacao. Criollo cacao. Ancient medicine. Superfood. Heart-opening. Premium. Heirloom.

There is so much language surrounding cacao today that it can be difficult to know what any of it actually means.

So I want to do something a little different.

I want to undress cacao.

Strip away the marketing. Strip away the mythology. Strip away the inflated promises. Strip away the wellness speak.

What are we actually left with?

Cacao.

And maybe cacao doesn’t need dressing up to be extraordinary.

I’ve been around the wellness and natural medicine world for most of my life.

Long enough to have watched a lot of fads arrive with enormous promises and quietly disappear again. Long enough to have seen ingredients become superfoods, plants become trends and ancient traditions become very modern marketing opportunities.

And I haven’t only experienced this world from one side.

I’ve had the privilege of working across research and development and marketing within natural medicine, teaching and training within the field, and spending many years working directly with people as a practitioner.

I’ve seen some extraordinary work.

I’ve also seen the lengths brands can go to when there’s a good story to sell.

Then, in 2019, I stepped away from clinical practice and created Mamamuti.

Cacao became my work.

And after years of sourcing it, tasting it, selling it, travelling into cacao-growing communities, meeting farmers and learning more about the incredibly complex world behind this plant, something has become increasingly clear to me:

The more I learn about cacao, the less interested I am in the story we can sell about it, and the more interested I am in what is actually true.

Not what sounds good on a packet.

Not what sells for $100 a bag.

Not what performs well on Instagram.

Not what makes cacao appear more exotic, more spiritual, more ancient, more medicinal or more exclusive.

What is actually true?

Because cacao has become very dressed up.

Somewhere along the way, cacao became confusing.

Today, particularly within the wellness world, cacao comes wrapped in an extraordinary amount of language.

Ceremonial.
Sacred.
Ancient.
Heart-opening.
High-vibrational.
Medicine.
Criollo.
Heirloom.
Rare.
Premium.

Some of these words have history and context. Some can be useful. Some may describe a genuine experience somebody has had with cacao.

And some have become very good marketing. That’s the bit I want to talk about. Not because I want to take anything away from cacao.

Quite the opposite.

I think we’ve added so much to cacao that we’ve stopped looking at the cacao itself.

Where was it grown?

Who grew it?

What were they paid?

Who fermented it?

How was it fermented?

How was it dried?

How was it processed?

How old is it?

Who imported it?

How many hands has it passed through?

What does it actually taste like?

And can the person selling it answer those questions?

Those questions may not sound as sexy as sacred heart-opening medicine.

But I think they matter a great deal more.

This isn’t an anti-ceremony conversation

I want to be very clear about this.

I’m not anti-ritual.

I’m not anti-spirituality.

I’m not anti-expensive cacao.

I’m not interested in telling anybody how they should experience cacao, either.

If sitting quietly with a cup of cacao means something profound to you, beautiful.

If you drink it while dancing around your kitchen in your undies, also beautiful.

If you put it in a saucepan with oat milk and drink it because it tastes ridiculously good, excellent.

There is room for all of it.

What I am interested in is transparency.

Because personal meaning and marketing claims are not the same thing.

And somewhere within the enormous growth of cacao in the wellness world, I think those two things have become increasingly tangled.

We love cacao’s ancient story. But what about its modern one?

We talk a lot about cacao’s ancient history.

And we should.

Cacao has an extraordinary human story stretching back thousands of years. It has been cultivated, consumed, traded, valued and woven into the lives and cultures of people long before any of us turned it into a wellness trend.

That history deserves respect.

Mamamuti wants to honour the ancient story of cacao.

But I also think we’ve become so captivated by cacao’s past that we’re not paying enough attention to its present.

And cacao’s modern-day story isn’t quite as mystical.

It isn’t as romantic.

It doesn’t always look beautiful on Instagram.

Today, cacao is also a global commodity feeding an enormous and very hungry chocolate industry.

Behind every piece of chocolate and every bag of cacao are farmers, families, communities, processors, exporters, importers, manufacturers and an incredibly complex global supply chain.

There are questions about who gets paid what.

Who holds the power.

How cacao is grown.

What changing climates mean for the people growing it.

How much traceability really exists.

And how disconnected the people growing cacao can be from the finished products, and the enormous value we create from it.

I’ve met cacao farmers who have never tasted what their own cacao eventually becomes.

Just sit with that for a moment.

We are selling stories about cacao as sacred, ancient and extraordinary while some of the people responsible for growing it remain profoundly disconnected from the value of what they produce.

That is part of cacao’s story too.

And perhaps it is the part that needs more of our attention right now.

Because honouring cacao’s history shouldn’t mean freezing cacao somewhere in the ancient past.

We have to bring cacao into the now.

We have to be willing to look at what is actually happening to this crop, to the people growing it and to the systems surrounding it today.

The modern story might not be as mystical.

It might not be as romantic.

It might occasionally make us uncomfortable.

But it is real.

And if we genuinely care about cacao, surely we need to care about the whole story.

The ancient one.

The modern one.

And the one we are collectively writing next.

That, for me, is part of Undressing Cacao too.

Not stripping cacao of its history or meaning.

Stripping away enough of the romance that we can actually see it.

Even the things we think we know deserve another look

I’ve realised over the years how many neat little cacao stories start falling apart when you scratch beneath the surface.

Even something as simple as a cacao “bean.”

It isn’t actually a bean. It’s a seed.

Cut open a cacao pod and inside you’ll find seeds surrounded by sweet, sticky white pulp. Those seeds are fermented and dried, and eventually become the cacao and chocolate we know.

We call them cacao beans because that language has become completely normalised. I’ve used the word myself for years.

But botanically, they’re seeds.

And I love this as an example of what Undressing Cacao is really about.

It’s not about being pedantic or correcting people for the sake of it.

It’s about getting closer to the plant.

Looking again at the language we’ve inherited.

Asking why we call things what we call them.

And being willing to say, Actually, I didn’t know that.

Because there’s a lot about cacao we’ve simplified.

Take cacao varieties.

For years consumers have been taught a wonderfully simple hierarchy:

Criollo = superior.
Trinitario = average.
Forastero = inferior.

Nice and tidy.

Nature, unfortunately, did not receive the marketing memo.

Cacao genetics are far more complicated than three convenient boxes. Trees cross-pollinate. Populations move. Genetics mix. Classification changes as science advances.

And yet those three words are still routinely used to communicate quality, and sometimes justify price.

The same questions can be asked about the word ceremonial.

Or heirloom.

Or ancient.

Or medicine..

Or the health promises attached to cacao.

I’m not suggesting we throw every word out.

I’m suggesting we get curious about what those words actually mean.

Who defined them?

What evidence sits behind them?

And when we’re paying more because of them, what exactly are we paying for?

That’s what Undressing Cacao is about

Undressing Cacao is an invitation to look again.

To question some of the stories we’ve inherited about cacao, get curious about the language surrounding it, and look more closely at what’s underneath.

Because there’s a lot to undress.

The rise of “ceremonial” cacao and what that term actually means. The fact that cacao “beans” aren’t beans at all, but seeds. The neat little boxes we’ve put cacao genetics and varieties into. The claims we make about its health benefits and ancient history. The certifications, the pricing, the processing, the difference between cacao and cocoa, and the sometimes enormous distance between the person growing cacao and the person eventually consuming it.

I want to look more closely at sourcing and traceability, where the money goes, who holds the power, and what the modern cacao industry actually looks like behind all the beautiful language.

And I’m sure along the way I’ll find plenty of things I’ve believed myself that deserve another look.

Because this isn’t about Mamamuti standing on a pedestal declaring that we’ve got cacao figured out.

We don’t.

The deeper I go into cacao, the more complex it becomes.

And I love that.

Maybe we don’t need to make cacao more than it is

This is perhaps the question underneath all of this.

Why are we so determined to make cacao more extraordinary than it already is? 

Cacao is delicious.

It is nourishing.

It contains a fascinating collection of naturally occurring compounds.

It has thousands of years of human history.

It supports livelihoods and communities across the cacao-growing world.

It can be bitter, fruity, floral, smoky, nutty, acidic, creamy, earthy, delicate or wildly complex.

It can become chocolate.

It can become a drink.

It can become food.

It can become part of a ritual.

It can be something you share with somebody you love.

And sometimes it can simply be something you eat because it gives you enormous pleasure.

That is already a story.

So this is where I want to go next with Mamamuti.

Less embellishment.

More curiosity.

More transparency.

More conversations about where cacao actually comes from and the people behind it.

More attention to what is happening to cacao today.

More willingness to question the stories we’ve been sold, even the beautiful ones.

And a lot more respect for cacao itself.

Strip away the marketing.

Strip away the mythology.

Strip away the inflated promises.

Strip away the wellness speak.

What are we left with?

Cacao.

And maybe cacao never needed dressing up in the first place.