Need an excuse to keep chocolate in your diet?
Here’s one for you: chocolate is actually healthy.
Ok, let’s redefine that statement; it’s not healthy to eat your kid’s entire bag of Halloween candy in one night or to finish off your chocolate Easter Bunny in an hour. But believe it or not, there are healthy benefits of chocolate -- including cardiovascular benefits, lower rates of heart disease and cancer, and decreased blood pressure.
How can chocolate be healthy?
It’s all thanks to the key ingredient of chocolate: cocoa. Cocoa had long been used in ancient civilizations for religious rituals, but today's research shows that it has many health advantages. Most of the benefits come from something called flavonoids. Flavonoids are antioxidants, just like the types found in tea, vegetables, and fruit. See, chocolate isn’t as bad as you thought!
A Harvard study showed that eating cocoa is associated with decreased blood pressure, decreased cholesterol, and all around healthier blood vessels. And surprisingly, another study linked cocoa to a reduced risk of diabetes.
But one of the best studies discovered that increased cocoa consumption doesn’t change triglyceride levels, which is a type of fat that is linked to coronary heart disease and obesity. Long story short: cocoa isn’t the reason you don’t fit into your jeans from college.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean we can just eat Kit-Kats instead of our fruits and veggies. Chemically speaking, chocolate does lose some of the flavonoids in the baking process thereby reducing the benefits of cocoa. However, most of the studies conducted above used dark chocolate for testing, which is much healthier than plain milk chocolate. But plain cocoa still has more health benefits.
So what does this mean for the fate of your chocolate diet?
First, don’t think you have to cut it out completely. That’s crazy talk. Second, don’t just start eating spoonfuls of baking cocoa. Hate to break it to you, but for being the key ingredient of chocolate, cocoa isn’t that sweet.
So what can you do? You can check out WheatgrassLove of course! Our healthy and delicious Revv provides the best of both worlds: the sweet taste of chocolate as well as the benefits of cocoa and many other vitamins & minerals to make you healthier and more alert. What could be better?
