Ah chocolate, our old friend. Most of us know it well, and we’ve been through a lot together- good times, bad times…fat and thin times.
If chocolate were a person, they’d be that friend you can never resist – the one with all the bad influences, right? The one who always makes you feel good at the time, but later you regret it. How is this possible?
The Harvard University Journal recently reported that several studies confirm chocolate is as addictive as illicit drugs. It’s just as easy to rely on food for comfort as any other substance. So if you class yourself as a “chocoholic”, take heart – science knows it’s not entirely your fault.
However, unlike harmful drugs, chocolate has been shown to contribute to the prevention of heart disease. There’s a wealth of research that shows it can help with lots of other health conditions too, such as lowering the incidence of cancer, stress, and even alleviating anxiety and other symptoms of schizophrenia. See more studies here and here.
So what’s going on? How can this delicious food be so evil and so good at the same time?
First, it’s important to know that man-made additives are actually the main culprits. Sugar and milk are what make chocolate fattening and unhealthy.This is why dark chocolate, which have significantly less of these ingredients, is much better for our health.
Cocao, a plant extract, is what gives chocolate its unique flavour and colour. It’s also the part that’s packed with antioxidants and health benefits, due largely to flavanols, a compound in its chemical makeup.
The higher the temperature cocao is cooked at, the more flavanols are killed off. So that means that the milkier and the more processed the chocolate, the less beneficial it is to our health. That’s why even though scientists can’t say that chocolate is all bad, they would never give it prime position in a food pyramid, because it simply hasn’t got the right ratio of healthy versus unhealthy ingredients.
Cocao by itself, on the other hand, can be taken in much greater amounts without guilt. You can mix raw cocao powder into drinks, cereals, or add them to dishes that are set in the fridge rather than baked. This way you retain all the goodness, which include protein, calcium, carotene, thiamin, riboflavin, magnesium, and sulfur.
If you manage to consume enough of these, the brain gets to release feel-good chemicals such as anandamide, commonly known as the “bliss molecule”. See what Dr Tim Carr, a General Practitioner in Sydney has to say about its role in chocolate.
