Chocolate for the Heart
November 17th, 2008
By Sharalee Fraser
The old saying goes, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Well, according to WebMD Health News, the apple has been replaced by dark chocolate. Of course that doesn’t mean that it’s time for you to go on a chocolate binge. The recommended daily intake is 1.6 ounces a day. This small amount of chocolate provides numerous health benefits, especially for your heart, all because of a little thing called a flavonoid.
Flavonoids are water-soluble pigments found in plants and plant-based food products such as red wine and tea. In chocolate, they are found in the cocoa bean. They help the body by preventing cholesterol from collecting in blood vessels. Dark chocolate contains two types of flavonoids: epicatechins and procyanidins. These help decrease the risk of heart attacks, high blood pressure, heart disease, cholesterol oxidation and blood clots. On the plus side, dark chocolate boosts serotonin and endorphin levels in the brain, helping to improve your mood. Dark chocolate also helps the heart because it’s loaded with antioxidants, which help get rid of the harmful molecules in your body that are implicated in causing heart disease as well as other disorders.
So if you can get flavonoids from other foods, aren’t they better for you? Amazingly the answer is no. Since chocolate is plant derived it helps your heart, just like fruits and vegetables. The key here is moderation. There’s such a thing as too much chocolate. Remember, chocolate does have quite a few calories in it, and going overboard in your daily chocolate fix can actually reverse the benefits it might otherwise provide and end up doing more harm than good.
So why not milk or white chocolate? Well, in the refining process, dark chocolate maintains about 95 percent of its flavonoids. Milk chocolate has far less flavonoids as it only has a small amount of cocoa in it, while white chocolate has no flavonoids at all because it doesn’t contain the cocoa bean. So yes, dark is best!
Now, if you’re going to go and get some chocolate for your heart, how do you know what is best? Here are a few guidelines in choosing the best dark chocolate:
- The darker the better—the darker the chocolate, the more flavonoids. Make sure the chocolate is 70 percent cocoa or more.
- Avoid any chocolate made with hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, which actually hurt your cholesterol levels.
- Make sure it’s made from cocoa butter—not fats like coconut and palm oils—to avoid the negative effects of saturated fats. Though cocoa butter does contain saturated fats, it can actually have a neutralizing, and even beneficial, effect on cholesterol unlike coconut and palm oils.
So, next time you go to place a piece of mouth-watering chocolate in your mouth, try dark. Not only is it a great way to do your heart a favor, but it’s a scrumptious one as well!
November 18th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Great article Sharalee!!
I now have an excuse to eat a little chocolate each day!!
November 18th, 2008 at 8:53 am
YUM-M-M
November 18th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
A good reason to keep up the 3 o’clock chocolate regime. Thanks!
November 18th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Thanks for the info Sharalee! It will come in handy.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Chocolate is good. The writer recommends Dove dark chocolate. She told me just now.
November 21st, 2008 at 5:21 pm
YAY!! Even though its a bit bitter, we can have a little delight in our day! Hershey’s Bliss Dark Chocolate should be okay, I guess.
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:06 am
That is a good article. I enjoyed reading it and helped me to understand something a little better. Believe me when I say that eating too much can have negative side effects. I used to eat a slab at a time. NOT GOOD as it catches up very fast on the paunch area and it can take a lot of hard work to get rid of that cooler bag.
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I loved it I can actually eat cholate without worring on getting fat! Ya
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Go choclate!
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Great article. I’m glad to know that chocolate is healthy.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Oooooo chocolate! I looovve chocolate and since this article says it okay to eat, I offically love this article too! Great job Sharalee!!
November 24th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Thanks! Yes Vivien! Hershey’s Bliss Dark is also very yummy!
December 14th, 2008 at 9:49 am
What a delightful article! It’s good to know that we can savour the taste of creamy dark chocolates and at the same time think about the benefits of doing so. As you’ve written, we should all just eat in moderation. As a person who enjoys eating chocolate, I’d would like to say thank you..
December 14th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Thank you for interesting, informative article. I have one concern though. You wrote about hydrogenated oils, etc. but you said nothing about the most dangerous of villains of all … Sugar! (refined sugar). You can get chocolate made without refined sugar. My advise to everyone is to avoid chocolate made with refined sugar. Buy sugarless instead and save yourself some money and avoid trips to the dentist and a lot of pain!
December 15th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Sugarless chocolate (and really any “sugarless” options) often has NutraSweet, Equal, Saccharin, Splenda, Sucralose or other harmful substitutes. In that case, it would be better to have the sugar, although refined, rather than some chemical substance.
December 16th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Also, the higher percentage of cocoa bean in the chocolate, the less sugar and/or other additives there are. Another option is organic chocolate - I’ve tried it and it’s pretty good.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Again,thank you for delightful article…I’m going to share it with my chocolate friend. Yes, you’re right about avoiding NutraSweet, Saccharin etc. these have been linked with some adverse health affects (cancer to name just one). Sucrose or refined sugar has adverse health affects also, namely, tooth decay(oral bacteria convert sugars from food into acids that attack tooth enamel) their are other adverse health problems associated with sucrose also. When I mentioned avoid chocolate that has refined sugar as a sweetener and buy sugarless instead, I was thinking about other beneficial sugarless sweeteners.(actual their not sugarless-they just aren’t sucrose or refined sugar) These include sugar alcohols. Sugar alcohols do not contribute to tooth decay!!! Isomalt, Maltitol, Mannitol, Sorbitol, Xylitol to name a few. You can find chocolate with these sweeteners instead of refined sugar (sucrose).