Is chocolate good for you? Yes! The health benefits of chocolate are many... assuming we're talking about chocolate in its purest form - as close to the bean as you can get. If you talk about a Milky Way bar then you're going to be disappointed. That doesn't mean, however, that there aren't any chocolate bars that are good for you. The key is to find a bar with high cocoa content. The higher the cocoa content, the less room there is for cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, vanilla, milk, and other stuff that makes chocolate less of a vegetable and more of a candy.
What makes the chocolate nutritious?
Nutritious chocolate is made of cocoa paste, cocoa butter, and sugar. The seeds of the fruit of the cocoa tree (native to Central and South America) produce the cocoa paste and cocoa butter. The cocoa seeds are fermented, roasted, and ground into a paste. The basis for all chocolate and cocoa products is nonalcoholic chocolate liquor. It contains a multitude of nutrients: cocoa powerful antioxidants, fats (through cocoa butter); carbohydrates (through starch and various sugars); large amounts of vegetable proteins, potassium, and magnesium; small amounts of calcium and sodium; traces of iron; vitamins A, B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), D, and E; and caffeine. Many of these are good nutrients. For a relatively small quantity, chocolate is a high-energy food.
So what are the amazing health benefits of chocolate?
Most notably, chocolate is a champion antioxidant. Antioxidants help rid the body of free radicals, nasty little molecules running amok in your body causing aging and disease. Antioxidants bind to the free radicals and whisk them from your body via digestion and other means.
Antioxidant-rich diets have been linked to a lowered risk of heart attacks, stroke, cardiovascular disease, cancer, high blood pressure, cholesterol problems, arthritis, asthma, Alzheimer's and more.
Some people will point out that chocolate is loaded with fat, sugar, and caffeine. It's true that cocoa butter, the main source of fat (besides milk) in chocolate, is composed of both saturated and unsaturated fats, but most of this, about 75%, is in the form of oleic and stearic acids. Diets rich in these acids have been shown to lower cholesterol levels. While 25% of the fat in chocolate is "the bad kind," the amount of good fat in chocolate seems to counteract the bad fat. And, as with all chocolates, the darker they are the less room there is for things like cocoa butter, and the more room for that healthy antioxidant-packed cocoa.
What about the sugar?
Well, that is bad. But keep in mind that a strong dark chocolate bar might have ten to fifteen grams of sugar, which is still less than the 22 grams in your glass of orange juice and the 29 grams in your cup of yogurt, all of which are considered "good" for you. Keep your eye on the labels, too. Some of the specialty chocolate manufacturers are choosing healthier alternatives to refined white sugar, such as evaporated cane juice and molasses.
What about the caffeine in chocolate?
An average bar contains about 27 mg, about half what you'd find in a cola and a third what you'd find in a cup of coffee. Besides which, studies have shown that having some, but less than 200 mg of caffeine a day, might actually be good for you.
Chocolate contains small amounts of oxalate thus inhibiting calcium absorption to some extent. Calcium from food sources, such as milk and yogurt, are your best sources of calcium. If you consume 1,200 to 1,500 milligrams of calcium and 400 to 800 international units of vitamin D daily from food or calcium supplements, eating chocolate in moderation is unlikely to adversely affect your bone health.
Thus the bottom line is that
indulging in a small amount of dark chocolate might be the perfect dessert - satisfying your sweet tooth while treating your body to the many health benefits of chocolate. So next time you're craving dessert, reach for the dark chocolate, and hold the guilt.
