Recent research shows chocolate is not a junk food; on the contrary, it has proven health benefits. Dark chocolate, in fact, has been shown to contain natural antioxidants which, among other things, can potentially improve cardiovascular health.

It’s not surprising, then, that fine chocolate brands such as Dove and Ghirardelli have flooded the market with variations of dark chocolate. But it is the lesser-known dark chocolate brands from around the globe that are attracting attention.

UK’s Green & Black brand got its name from the organic nature of the product (green) and the pureness of the Belize cocoa the company uses to produce dark chocolate bars (black). The company’s “Maya Gold” bar was the first fair-trade chocolate product sold in the U.K. Thirty percent of Green & Black’s US$ 100 million in sales now comes from North America, says The New York Times.

TCHO, a San Francisco-based chocolatier, takes an interesting high-tech approach to chocolate making. The company produces “beta editions” of dark chocolate before they become officially available. “TCHO 1.0” recently made it to market after going through more than 1,000 modifications.

But only one dark chocolate can lay claim to the cocoa bean of Madagascar: Madécasse. The name is an ancient word referring to the island nation located off the coast of East Africa in the Indian Ocean. Madagascar is an ecological wonderland. About 75 percent of the animals and 85 percent of the flora and fauna on the island are found nowhere else. Madagascar is renowned for its vanilla, and the island’s cocoa beans are believed to produce some of the world’s finest dark chocolate.

The reason is simple: The island has effectively been forgotten by time. Madagascar is unspoiled by pesticides and herbicides – and civilization, for that matter. The island is naturally organic, since farmers use mulch and compost as fertilizers. Work is accomplished on a small scale, without the mechanization common to large industrial operations. The cocoa grows in a river valley far to the north and west of the island.

Curiously, the Madécasse brand is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. It is the brainchild of two Americans, Brett Beach and Tim McCollum, who served as Peace Corps volunteers in Madagascar. They fell in love with the place and wanted to do something that focused on sustainable agriculture and created finished products on the island in a way that would positively impact the local economy. It certainly needed help – Madagascar is the tenth poorest country in the world.

Chocolate was a natural. Beach and McCollum’s approach was different from other chocolate producers, though. Instead of harvesting and exporting the cocoa beans, as most companies do, Madécasse makes the chocolate at the source. As a result, the cocoa beans are fresher – they spend just one month between harvest and manufacturing. Since everything is done on the island, the profits are returned to the local people. It’s the ultimate in “fair trade.”

There are only about 30 bean-to-bar chocolate makers in the world, according to Beach and McCollum. Madécasse is more appropriately tree to bean to bar, because everything takes place at the source, from harvesting and curing the cocoa beans in the Sambirano valley to creating bars of chocolate on the island. Beach and McCollum point out that “dried cocoa is usually prepared for export to the northern hemisphere, thousands of miles away. Madécasse cocoa beans take a much shorter trip, traveling just a few hundred miles to the highlands of Madagascar.”

Madécasse started out by producing dark chocolate bars ranging from 63 percent to 75 percent dark chocolate. (The higher the percentage of cacao, the stronger and more intense the flavor.) Now, the company also sells pure Madagascar vanilla, vanilla cane sugar, and black peppercorn indigenous to the island.

Last November, BusinessWeek selected Madécasse as one of “America’s most promising startups.” At the time, the magazine said the company’s chocolate was distributed to over 100 specialty retailers in the US Sales were projected to reach $500,000 by the end of 2009.

Beach and McCollum may not be rich now, but it’s likely they won’t be working for beans for very long.

Barry Silverstein has been a frequent brandchannel contributor since 2007. He has thirty years of advertising and marketing experience and is currently a freelance writer and marketing consultant. He founded and ran his own direct marketing agency and held executive positions with Epsilon, a leading database marketing firm and Arnold, a major ad agency. Silverstein is the author of three marketing books, including the McGraw-Hill book, The Breakaway Brand, which he co-authored with Arnold CEO Fran Kelly.