Ka’Chava

Have you heard of Ka’Chava? If your response is “Ka’what now,” then it’s time to sit up and take note! At Black Maple Magazine, we have several pet peeves, but we’re keen to focus on just one right now. Uppermost in our minds is when companies promise nutritious and delicious foods where the second half of this promise does not materialize. This could range from those inedible “chips,” to the can’t finish even one “cookie,” to the couldn’t choke it down “ice cream”. We’re all about getting healthier and stronger as we age and maintaining our cardio health, lean muscle, and microbiome, as we combat unhealthy inflammation, and aim for overall Blue Zone prowess (healthy aging into our 100s) as we eat a healthy, balanced, and tasty diet. But can we get real for a moment? Superfood or not, if it doesn’t taste good, who wants to eat it?

Since, as our go-to functional medicine expert Dr. Mark Hyman of the Doctor’s Farmacy podcast (and author of several New York Times bestselling books) relates, many of us have fallen prey to the dire health consequences of ultra-processed foods, fast food, factory farming, and other unhealthy agriculture practices that have stripped the nutrients from our foods, lots of people will simply not meet the threshold for their daily recommended allowances of vitamins and minerals without consistent supplementation. As far as Iron goes, this becomes an even more urgent issue for black women who are at a greater risk of suffering from fibroids which often provokes anemia characterized by fatigue, dizziness, brain fog, and other equally frustrating and debilitating effects.

Enter Ka’Chava, a powdered blend of superfoods, including plant protein, greens and vegetables, superfruits and berries, adaptogens, Omegas, probiotic and prebiotic fibre, functional mushrooms, and digestive enzymes, that can be added to water, juice, or your healthy milk of choice (think almond, cashew, oat, or coconut) and consumed as a snack or meal replacement. Ka’Chava also has a host of vitamins and minerals including A, C, D, E, the lovely Bs, as well as folate, biotin, pantothenic acid, niacinamide, calcium, phosphorus, iodine, magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, chloride, sodium, and potassium. Whew! Did you get all that? As for Iron (the thing that the fibroid-sufferers are losing far too much of) Ka’Chava’s Chocolate blend includes a whopping 7.5 mg which is 42% of your daily value (aka the recommended daily allowance).

Want more great news? Ka’Chava is not only great because of what’s in it, but what’s not. Those missing ingredients include, diary, gluten, soy, preservatives, and artificial colours, flavours, and sweeteners. It’s also suitable for vegans.

But the best part? Now hear this, this nutrient-packed superfood shake actually tastes incredibly good! It comes in several flavours including Coconut Acai, Chai, Matcha, Chocolate, and Vanilla. We blend our Chocolate Ka’Chava with oat milk and a frozen banana and add a slice of avocado (for extra creaminess) and a handful of frozen berries to our vanilla Ka’Chava. Ever helpful, the Ka’Chava website is host to delicious recipes that call for ingredients like nut butter, papaya, pineapple, or spinach and alternatives to water and milk like iced coffee or coconut water. Adding frozen fruit makes the smoothie taste like an ice cream milk shake (the naughty kind), meaning that as you are literally drinking to your health, depending on your added ingredients, you can enjoy Ka’Chava as your non-guilty pleasure dessert.

If you are considering Ka’Chava as a meal replacement, we know one concern is how long a smoothie makes you feel satiated. We started off having it for breakfast and found that with the added fruit, we are good to go for about 3 hours. But the shake tastes so darn good that we’ve started to drink it at night as a dessert instead of reaching for a nutrient-less, refined food, dessert-disaster.

So, if you are on the market for a tasty, superfood meal replacement, snack or dessert, we think Ka’Chava might be just the ticket. Cheers to better health one sip at a time!