One nutritional question I am often asked is, “Is chocolate really good for us?”
I’m going to borrow an answer from Dr. John Berardi, Ph.D.
Chocolate – A Health Food?
Much ado is being made about the…uhh…“health” properties of chocolate. It’s
everywhere:
“Study Hails Chocolate’s Benefits”
“Boosting Brain Power – With Chocolate”
“Chocolate is Good for Health”
“New Research Endorses Chocolate”
Now, come on, can all this “news” really be true?
Can chocolate, the ultimate“guilty pleasure” actually be good for us?
Is all this media attention on chocolate and its benefits justified?
Or is this simply a case of chocoholic justification?
Well, let’s ask Cornell researcher Chang Lee, chairman of the Department of Food
Science and Technology.
Comparing the antioxidant content and activity of green tea, red wine, and cocoa, Lee and his team found that cocoa has nearly 2x the antioxidants of red wine and up to 3x the antioxidants of green tea!
“If I had made a prediction before conducting the tests, I would have picked green
tea as having the most antioxidant activity.” said Lee.
“When we compared one serving of each beverage, the cocoa turned out to be the highest in antioxidant activity, and that was surprising to me.”
Why Cocoa?
You see, it appears that cocoa contains powerful antioxidants called polyphenols
– yep, the good stuff found in grapes, berries, and wine.
Further, cocoa contains a healthy dose of catechins and epicatechins – that’s right the good stuff found in green tea.
But hold on a second…before you rip open that Snickers bar, it’s important to
note that we’re talking about COCOA here, not milk chocolate.
What’s the difference?
Milk chocolate typically contains sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, milk or milk
powder, and vanilla as the base ingredients.
And something like Snickers contains much more including lactose, soy lecithin, artificial flavor, corn syrup, milk fat, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, egg whites, and more.
All this means that you’re getting very little real cocoa per bite!
So I pretty much avoid milk chocolate like the plague as it’s 100% junk food, plain and simple.
Real chocolate – the high % cocoa healthy stuff – is another story.
Real chocolate is a very simple product.
It contains cocoa. And it contains cocoa butter. That’s it.
And as a result of this simplicity, real chocolate has virtually no sugar, is high in
fiber, and is loaded with maximal doses of polyphenols and catechins!
COMPARING CHOCOLATES:
Check out the nutritional profile of a 50g bar of healthy, 100% cocoa chocolate:
100% cocoa, 50g
250kcal
7g protein
13g carbs (0.5g sugar, 8g fiber)
24g fat (16g sat fat)
Now, moving down the scale of “healthiness”, let’s look at some other options:
85% cocoa, 50g
260kcal
5g protein
10g carbs (6.25g sugar, 3.75g fiber)
22.5g fat (14g sat fat)
70% cocoa, 50g
275kcal
3.75g protein
16.25g carbs (13.75 sugar, 2.5g fiber)
21.25g fat (12.5g sat fat)
Snickers Bar, 50g
282kcal
4g protein
35g carbs (30g sugar, 1g fiber)
14g fat (5g sat fat)
Notice that the farther we move from the high cocoa chocolate, the following
happens:
1) We get more calories
2) We get more sugar
3) We get less protein
4) We get less fiber
It’s also important to note that as the % cocoa goes down, we usually get fewer
and fewer antioxidants while adding more and more artificial ingredients.
My conclusion:
If you’re going to eat chocolate at all, go 100% or go home.
Just make sure you do so in moderation as, unlike Green Tea, all chocolate
contains a fair amount of calories and this needs to be considered as you try to
work it into your eating plan. (Thanks John for those facts!)
Can Shelli tell the difference?
Yep!
Trust me, you CAN taste the difference.
Last year my cousin Corky returned from Europe with all different cocoa blends for us to sample.
As luck would have it, I saw her on a day when she still had plenty of samples and we had fun indulging our taste buds.
Viva la difference……..
Remember that you are the product of the choices you make.
Your choices are ingredients, just like the ingredients that Dr. Berardi referred to in his discussion of cocoa.
Be aware of your choices and choose ingredients that bring you long term health and long term energy.
That’s how you’ll find your menopausal sweet spot!
Shelli
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