Cocoa and Coffee for Brain Health After Stroke and Aphasia
Cocoa & Coffee
Real taste, simple ritual, brain food for stroke
Cocoa is chocolate — just the pure, unsweetened part.
This is part of my 7 Brain Foods for Stroke: My Daily Brain-Support Program.
I drank coffee with Half & Half and sugar from the time I was 18.
In winter, my special treat was what I thought was coffee with cocoa and chocolate.
It was actually Swiss Miss — a highly processed mix of sugar, corn syrup, modified whey, cocoa processed with alkali, hydrogenated oils, and artificial flavor.
For 50 years, I drank junk every winter.
First I quit sugar, mostly because it made me gain weight.
By 50, I was used to coffee without sugar.
But I still drank instant cocoa. It seemed fine at the time.
Remembering Wonderful Coffee
During COVID, I started noticing that modern coffee tasted bitter.
Only once did I taste truly wonderful natural coffee — in Hawaii.
The coffee there was smooth, rich, and complex, grown in volcanic soil with careful harvesting.
It tasted real.
That memory stayed with me.
In the years since my stroke, cocoa and coffee is one of my daily brain foods, along with walnuts and meals cooked in olive oil.
I use unsweetened cocoa with coffee, without sugar.
Bitter. Deep. Real.
Before sugar, milk, and candy, chocolate begins as cocoa — from cacao beans — keeping natural plant compounds linked to brain and blood-vessel health.
For me, cocoa and coffee together are one small, simple habit that supports recovery.
No sugar spike. No additives. Just cocoa.
Small daily pleasures can also be good medicine.