Know Your Cacao: What It Teaches Us About Our Food System

When you pick up a bar of chocolate or sip a cup of delicious cacao, how often do you think about where it came from? Not just the country or region, but the actual journey, from seed to tree to hands to you.

At Tuqtuquilal, we believe that the story of your cacao matters. And not just for cacao, but for every ingredient you put into your body.

Let’s begin with looking at the seed, the place where the whole plant world begins. The integrity of that seed—its genetics, its origin—sets the blueprint for everything that follows. Is it a native variety passed down through generations, or a hybrid developed for yield? Was it imported from another continent, or cultivated in these lands for generations? From there, how the seed is planted, nurtured, and grown reflects the energy and care behind the food we consume.

Cacao is a plant that thrives in biodiversity. In the wild, it grows among many species like cardamom, cinnamon, copal, black pepper, and allspice, and is supported by rich, living soil. In this biodiverse environment, cacao is at its best. Unfortunately, the majority of cacao today is farmed in monocultures, an industrialized agriculture system that depends on chemicals to grow trees. This method replaces the natural complexity of life, stripping the soil of life and the plant of its full potential.

You can think about it like a human too (another type of plant!) If we grow up in a creative, diverse, healthy environment, our best qualities develop. We grow and blossom into the best versions of ourselves. On the contrary, if we grow up or live in a sterile, isolated, homogenous, boring environment, we don’t feel well — and our best gifts and qualities do not naturally emerge.

We want the best for our cacao, which is why we choose to grow our cacao in community with wild nature, not in isolation from it. It’s tended by farmers who have a relationship with the land—people who know their plants, their rhythms, and what they need. Every step of the way, there’s a relationship. A collaboration. All of the energy of a meaningful relationship goes into the plant; how a plant is cared for is expressed in its fruits.

And then there’s the process. At Tuqtuquilal, we do everything by hand. From harvesting and fermenting to drying and roasting, there’s a human touch at every stage. Not because it’s easier (it's not!) but because we believe it preserves the integrity and potency of the cacao, and this is what helps to maintain its medicinal value. That level of care and attention matter.

Our modern food system is built for speed and volume, often at the cost of nutrition, flavor, and life force. Tuqtuquilal offers a model of resistence to that way of tending food. We don’t want to live in a world where crops are grown in depleted soil, sprayed with chemicals, and processed in machines that prioritize shelf life over substance. Because in that process, we lose the very essence of what food is meant to be: nourishing, healing, and connective.

Cacao teaches us to slow down. To remember that food has a story, and that how it’s grown, processed, and shared makes a difference. When you buy our cacao, you’re tasting an ingredient grown with integrity—not just because it’s better for the Earth, but because it’s better for you.

Our hope is that by modeling how to honor the integrity of medicinal food, from seed to block, it opens the door to more curiosity, more awareness, and more intention. Not just with cacao, but with every ingredient you bring into your home. Food should be medicine. It should be alive. And it starts by asking: Where did this come from?