I Heart Chocolate

You may be surprised to learn that chocolate isn’t as bad for you as once believed. The key is to find a bar with high cocoa content. The higher the cocoa content, the less room there is for cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, vanilla, milk. The fat in chocolate comes from cocoa butter and is made up of equal amounts of oleic acid (a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat also found in olive oil), stearic and palmitic acids. Stearic and palmitic acids are forms of saturated fat. You may know that saturated fats are linked to increases in LDL cholesterol and the risk of heart disease. Just don’t go overboard—chocolate still contains sugar and fat.

Dark chocolate is good for your heart. A small bar of it everyday can help keep your heart and cardiovascular system running well. A daily serving of dark chocolate, which contains more antioxidants than milk chocolate, can also help lower blood pressure and improve insulin resistance.

The health benefits of dark chocolate are:

• Lower Blood Pressure: Studies have shown that consuming a small bar of dark chocolate everyday can reduce blood pressure in individuals with high blood pressure.
• Lower Cholesterol: Dark chocolate has also been shown to reduce LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) by up to 10 percent.
• Chocolate is one of the best antioxidants. Antioxidants help rid the body of free radicals, which cause aging and disease. Antioxidants bond to free radicals and whisk them from your body via digestion and other means.
• Chocolate has the property of increasing levels of serotonin and dopamine in the brain. Both of these neurotransmitters in the brain cause feelings of happiness and well-being. Chocolate never fails to create feelings of well-being throughout the body.

So don’t be afraid to eat chocolate, you’ll be happy, and energized.

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