Have an account? Log in to check out faster.
RAW CACAO BASED SUPPLEMENTS · FORMULATED IN HAWAIʻI ·
Living Synergy LLC
For three thousand years, emperors, warriors and royal courts drank cacao for how it made them feel. Then industry turned it into candy. Raw, non-fermented, non-roasted and cold-processed, Living Synergy brings back what the chocolate industry stripped away.
Raw cacao, Never fermented, Never roasted, Cold-processed, Formulated in Hawaiʻi, Lab tested, Vegan capsules
Real photos · real trees
Long before cacao becomes chocolate, or finds its way into a capsule, its story begins with a delicate flower growing directly from the trunk of Theobroma cacao.
Once pollinated, the flower begins an extraordinary transformation. What first appears as a tiny blossom gradually develops into a mature cacao pod, while the plant directs energy into the formation of its seeds, fruit pulp, pigments, and complex botanical chemistry.
Within the developing seed, the cacao tree synthesizes and accumulates a remarkable spectrum of naturally occurring compounds. More than 380 chemical compounds have been identified in cacao, including flavanols, polyphenols, proanthocyanidins, and methylxanthines such as theobromine.
Inside the mature pod, these seeds rest within a sweet, white fruit pulp known as cacao mucilage. Beneath this coating, on most varieties, the raw seed reveals a vivid purple interior. A visual expression of the plant’s naturally occurring pigments and polyphenolic constituents.
This is cacao in its living raw botanical form: a seed shaped by the intricate biochemistry of the tree.
raw · never fermented
What was lost
Long before it was candy, cacao was an experience. For more than three thousand years, the Olmec, Maya and Aztecs ground the seeds into a bitter, frothing drink and they prized it for what happened after the cup was empty: a surge of energy, a lift in mood, a clear and focused mind.
When Hernán Cortés and the Spanish conquistadors encountered cacao in 1519, it was not the taste that won them over. The drink was famously bitter. It was the feeling. They carried cacao home to Spain, and from there it spread through the royal courts and affluent houses of Europe, still consumed as a beverage and still valued for its energy, stamina and euphoria.
Then came the pressure to make it cheaper, more palatable. In 1828, Dutch chemist Coenraad van Houten patented a press that squeezed the fat from the seed, leaving a dry powder he then treated with alkaline salts. It was a masterpiece of industrial engineering. Harsh bitterness mellowed into a smooth, palatable flavor. Beans of different genetics and wildly different flavor profiles could be blended into one consistent product. Separating the powder from the butter meant every batch could be measured, standardized and scaled.
Within twenty years, the first solid chocolate bar was born, but the bitterness the chocolate industry engineered away was the very chemistry people had valued. The flavanols, polyphenols and methylxanthines behind cacao's felt experience are the same compounds that make it bitter, and fermentation, roasting and alkalization strip out the vast majority of them. The molecules that made people feel something were largely gone. In the name of economics, profit and industrialization, cacao lost its soul.
Since the Dutch press arrived in 1828, most of the world's chocolate has been a recombination of cocoa powder and cocoa butter — the hollow remnants of a once-sacred plant. Fermentation, high-heat roasting and alkalization were built for flavor, color, shelf life and cost, and the compounds responsible for cacao's power happen to be the same ones responsible for its bitterness. Every step that made chocolate delicious made it inert.
Modern science is now confirming what ancient civilizations knew. Cacao flavanols and theobromine have been studied in randomized human clinical trials for blood flow, memory, cognitive performance, alertness and mood.*
Up to 80%
of cacao's flavanols can be lost during fermentation alone, before the beans ever leave the farm.
110–150 °C
roasting temperatures degrade heat-sensitive compounds and convert epicatechin into a less well-absorbed form.
Up to 89%
of the remaining flavanols lost to Dutch-process alkalization (34.6 mg/g in natural vs 3.9 mg/g heavily alkalized).
Figures: flavanol losses documented in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (fermentation; Miller et al., alkalization of commercial cocoa powders).
Food of the gods, Flower → pod → seed → capsule, Theobromine, Flavanols, Polyphenols, Nothing roasted out
From flower to capsule
From the first flower on the trunk to the capsule in your hand. Swipe through the whole journey.
Cacao is cauliflorous: its tiny flowers grow directly from the trunk and older branches, and only a small fraction ever become fruit.
Not bees. Tiny midges do the work, flower by flower, in the shade of the understory.
Each pod takes roughly five to six months to ripen, shifting from green to purple, red, orange or gold.
Ripe pods are cut by hand. No two look alike, and that's the fun of it.
Inside: raw seeds wrapped in sweet white mucilage. Nearly all the world's cacao is heaped and fermented from here, turning the purple seed brown. Ours is not.
Cold-processed into raw cacao seed powder with cryogenic techniques, then paired with one partner nutrient per formula. The chemistry of the pod, carried all the way to you.
Our source
Cacao does not grow in the continental United States. It thrives only in a narrow tropical belt within about twenty degrees of the equator, Hawaiʻi is the only US state where it grows at all, in it's natural environment, and there is no major source of raw cacao anywhere in the country. For most Americans, the real thing has simply been out of reach. Living Synergy exists to bring back what was lost. Every formula is built on raw, non-fermented, non-roasted, cold-processed cacao powder, protected through cold-process and cryogenic techniques designed to preserve the polyphenols, flavanols and delicate chemistry that chocolate-making strips away, so you can experience the true power of raw cacao.
Whole Raw Cacao seed powder. Never dutch processed Cocoa.
Skipping fermentation protects the flavanols that are otherwise oxidized and lost in the first week after harvest.
No high-heat roasting, so heat-sensitive compounds keep their native, well-absorbed form.
Low-temperature and cryogenic processing, and never alkalized.
The founder's philosophy
A feeling of power that enables a man to walk all day without fatigue.
Attributed to Hernán Cortés, on first encountering cacao
To the Maya, cacao was a gift of the gods. To the Aztecs, it was medicine, a warrior's ration and even money: cacao seeds were traded as currency. When the Spanish arrived, it was not the flavor that won them over. It was the feeling. That feeling was biochemical.
Our philosophy is to restore it, not as nostalgia but as neuroscience. Where industry reduced cacao to a sugary confection, we bring it back as a functional botanical: raw, cold-processed and formulated with purpose. A synthesis of ancient wisdom and modern biochemistry, returning to you what was traded away for convenience and profit.
Aloha from Hawaiʻi, Shot by our founder, Real trees, real pods, Raw cacao, restored
