Abstaining from chocolate is surely not an easy feat. The joy of chocolate is just too hard to resist even when it is loaded with sugar that obviously takes a toll on our health. Luckily, recent studies have shown that chocolate has tons of health benefits, particularly dark chocolate because it contains higher levels of cocoa and thus contain more antioxidants that’s even higher than black tea and red wine. Still, sugar levels in milk chocolate and white chocolate is enough to give the diabetic a heart attack. Even chocolates that are marketed as sugarless or sugar-free still contain maltitol, which is almost as bad as sugar. Is it possible to consume chocolate in its pure yummy goodness without consuming the carbohydrates and alarmingly high sugar? With a little ingenuity, it’s possible!

The Nutritious Content of Chocolate
Unsweetened chocolate contains about 8 grams of carbohydrate and around 145 calories, more than half of it is fiber, which is very good for the stomach and for aiding digestion. Chocolate, particularly unsweetened chocolate, also contains lots of minerals. One ounce of unsweetened chocolate contains about a quarter of the magnesium and iron, and about half of the manganese and copper that our body needs in a day. The fat contained in chocolate, when it is made of pure cocoa butter (and not animal fat or vegetable fat), is healthy fat-either stearic acid or monounsaturated fat, both considered to be “good saturated fat.” Three table spoons, or about 36 calories of unsweetened cocoa powder, has the same amount of fiber and carbohydrates as unsweetened chocolate but has lower levels of vitamins and minerals,. However, it also has much less fat content.

Appreciating Unsweetened Chocolate
The Maya and Aztecs, the earliest civilizations known to have consumed chocolate, used to drink unsweetened chocolate spiked up with some chili and spices. It was considered a drink for the royal family and was adopted by the Spanish courts. Unsweetened chocolate also makes a wonderful ingredient for unusual but interesting dishes such as Cincinnati Chili and Mexican mole sauces. It adds a fuller and richer flavor to dishes that blends well with sauces without being too distinct, plus it adds a wonderful aroma. When it comes to desserts and sweets, it’s harder to go totally unsweetened. Unsweetened cocoa has a really bitter taste that may be too string for most people’s palate. Artificial sweeteners are available, such as maltitol and other sugar alcohols. However, maltitol is about the same as regular sugar when it comes to its blood sugar impact, so using it as a sugar substitute may be defeating the point. While we want to find a healthy alternative to sweetening chocolate, we don’t want to sacrifice depth of flavor and mouth feel. Sugar alcohols can provide the same characteristics as regular sugar to chocolates. It counteracts the bitterness of chocolate wonderfully better than artificial sweeteners. Sugar alcohols are not all alike though. When buying sugar-free milk chocolates, use sugar alcohols that have the least impact on blood sugar such as erythritol. A healthy, but still yummy alternative is diabetic chocolate.

By: Chris Alleny

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It is great news that research has found a food that lowers blood pressure and is healthy for the heart and maybe more. The problem is that the chocolate Americans consume most is not the kind that was studied. The more popular kinds of chocolate have little or no positive effect on your health. Only certain chocolate may be healthy.

Dark chocolate is the chocolate that was found to have positive effects on blood pressure. Participants, either given dark, milk, or white chocolate every day were evaluated in different studies. It turns out that dark chocolate contains important antioxidants called phenols. These natural compounds from the cocoa bean are known to increase nitric oxide, reduce platelet aggregation, and inhibit oxidation of LDL cholesterol. Cocoa can decrease blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, and increase your insulin sensitivity. Milk and white chocolate are low in these antioxidants and do not have the same effect.

The problem is how chocolate is processed in this country. White chocolate, regardless of where you get it, actually contains no cocoa at all and is made only from cocoa butter; just the fat from the cocoa beans. It also contains no phenols. Most of the other chocolate we eat is made with “dutched” cocoa. The cocoa beans are treated with an alkaline solution to make them dark in color and reduce the natural bitterness from the plant. But it also reduces almost 90% of the phenols and most of its healthy benefits. The other problem is that when made into milk chocolate, the milk seems to prevent the phenols from being absorbed and, thus, negating any possible benefit from the chocolate.

The best chocolate for your health appears to be dark chocolate. In the European studies done, participants ate 100gm of chocolate a day (100 grams equals approx. 3.5 ounces). This is the equivalent to 2 1/2 regular size Hershey’s bars. It also added about 550 calories to their diet. They were instructed to substitute this amount of calories from other foods they normally ate each day. You would have to do the same or forego its healthy benefits by increasing your waistline. European chocolate in general is healthier than that found in America due to the fact that it is less processed than ours and contains more of the heart healthy antioxidants. Dark chocolate is an acquired taste for most Americans since it is much more bitter than its milky counterpart.

So why is this research being touted as the ‘best medical news in ages’? It appears to be one more way we look to justify the unhealthy diets we follow. When people hear that chocolate is now healthy, they don’t hear any of the other restrictions involved, and don’t want to. In fact, most people wouldn’t want to change to a more bitter tasting chocolate and also cut out over 500 calories from their diets as they did in the studies. Our diets already have enough sweets and this type of news only fuels the diabetic and obesity epidemics. This kind of medical news will only make most people add extra calories to their diets and increase their health problems.

These studies do look promising but there still is no information on how long these benefits last, how many phenols need to be eaten or how often. Stick with the darkest chocolate, if you must, and balance out your calories. Until we have more information, chocolate should remain a treat and not a treatment.

By: Gerald Meyer

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