Why Dark Chocolate Is So Good For You & Some Healthy Ways To Eat It

I hope your love of dark chocolate bought you here! As you would expect, I'm also a huge fan. Not only do I love it as a professional (naturally), but I love its health benefits too. In this blog I share with you dark chocolate's great benefits and some delectable ways that you can enjoy it too, without over indulging.​

It's too sad a fact to me that when you mention the word "chocolate", people often think of the unhealthy kind or the type with milk and all manner of other things in it. So if you're trying to eat a more healthy or plant-based lifestyle, dark chocolate is often considered as one of the "cheat" foods that you have to give up.

In reality, pure dark chocolate (I mean the heart-healthy kind that isn't full of unnecessary additives) is one of the best sources of antioxidants on the planet, which can improve your health and lower the risk of heart disease.

I personally think that a daily dose of dark chocolate should be one of your 5 a day! Really, you're probably thinking?! But there's reasoning behind what seems like my chocolate-addled madness!​

Here are 10 great reasons I think you can have "sweet tooth justification" and indulge in your love of the stuff every day (in moderation of course though):

1. Compared to milk chocolate eaters, those who prefer dark chocolate ate 15% fewer calories without even trying and reported fewer cravings for sweet, salty and fatty foods. In fact, research has even shown that milk decreases absorption of the heart-healthy flavonoids found in chocolate.
2. Dark chocolate contains natural substances, including some that produce a feeling of euphoria. A similar feeling to being in love - maybe that's why you love it!
3. Relative to a lot of other foods, dark chocolate is high in magnesium. As one of the most abundant minerals in your body, magnesium can help alleviate PMS symptoms, help your muscles and nerves to function correctly and regulate your mood.
4. Chocolate contains the same type of antioxidants found in red wine and tea, which have been shown to boost brain activity.
5. Dark chocolate has been shown to help regulate your levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. Surges in stress hormones have been linked to obesity.
6. Dark chocolate contains more cocoa solids than other types of chocolate, so it has a higher caffeine content than milk or white chocolate. One ounce of 70% dark contains about 40 mg of caffeine, compared to 200 mg in 8 ounces of brewed coffee and 120 mg in strong black tea. As it's a stimulant, check with you Doctor or Nutritionist if you have concerns about it's impact on you.
7. The antioxidants in cocoa trigger the walls of your blood vessels to relax, lowering blood pressure and improving circulation. This helps to give you more energy!
8. Dark Chocolate’s host of benefits for your heart include  lower blood pressure, lower “bad” LDL cholesterol and a lower risk of heart disease. One of the reasons dark chocolate is especially heart-healthy is its inflammation-fighting properties, which reduce cardiovascular risk. Heart-attack survivors who ate chocolate just twice a week over a two-year period cut their risk of dying from heart disease threefold.
9. The type of saturated fat in dark chocolate isn’t the same as the artery-clogging saturated fat in a red meat or butter for example. It’s a unique variety called stearic acid, much of which gets converted in the body to oleic acid, a heart-healthy monounsaturated fatty acid.
10. Believe it or not, dark chocolate can help you lose weight - really! A small square of good quality dark chocolate melted on the tongue 20 minutes before a meal triggers the hormones in the brain that say “I’m full”, cutting the amount of food you eat. Finishing a meal with the same small trigger could also reduce snacking and sugar spikes.

Cocoa v Cacao
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​I just want to add a little bit here about how you can boost your healthy brownie points by eating dark chocolate made with cacao rather than cocoa, and especially the raw variety. 

Raw cacao powder is made by cold-pressing unroasted cocoa beans. This process keeps the enzymes in the cocoa and removes the fat (cacao butter). Cocoa looks the same but it’s not. Cocoa powder is raw cacao that’s been roasted at high temperatures. Sadly, roasting changes the molecular structure of the cocoa bean, reducing the enzyme content and lowering the overall nutritional value.

As well as in powder form, you can buy cacao-based chocolate in bars, nibs, butter and drinking chocolate.

Healthy ways to eat more dark chocolate

Sadly, as with many things these days, moderation is a must! But what if you find that a treat of one or two individually wrapped squares quickly turns into a half the bar? Why don't you try adding small amounts of dark chocolate into meals and snacks instead? Here's some ideas:
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• Blend it into your smoothie
• Add it to your cereal
• Add it into your baked goods, like muffins and brownies (nibs are great for this)
• Dip your fruit in it (this works really well with children!)
• Add it to your yoghurt (eat a plant-based or naturally low fat version for healthy brownie points)

As you probably know, cacao is a staple in almost all of my products, and my chocolate is made from from it. The growing range shows that there's lots of ways that you can enjoy dark chocolate, and still feel great about it, and that's why I love the idea that I can help you to "Treat Yourself Healthy"!

Be Blessed
Marcia X
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