Superfoods – Chocolate

June 23, 2022June 15, 2022 New You

If you love chocolate then we have some good news! Apparently dark chocolate is a Superfood. For many people, this is a dream come true and if you can think of chocolate as a food that’s beneficial to health you may be less tempted to gorge on it.

When you do indulge in chocolate and you’re looking for a health benefit, choose dark chocolate. Milk chocolate or white chocolate won’t do. While both contain some of the beneficial polyphenols, preliminary data suggests that the presence of milk in the chocolate somehow mitigates the effectiveness of the polyphenols.

The good news is that dark chocolate seems to contribute to lowering blood pressure, increasing blood flow, and ultimately contributing to a healthy heart.

While there is some caffeine in chocolate, it’s not much. In a typical chocolate bar, the caffeine content ranges from 1 to 11 mg.
An 8-ounce cup of coffee has about 137 mg of caffeine.

However, don’t throw out all your healthy food and fill your cabinets with chocolate.

You need to remember:

Keep your daily dark chocolate intake to about 100 calories per day.
Eat only dark chocolate.
You can’t eat as much as you want. Chocolate is high in calories and if you eat too much of it you can gain weight. Depending on your weight and activity level, chocolate should be a small treat, a little healthy indulgence that will have to be accounted for in your overall calorie intake/activity equation.