Raise Your Hand if You Love Chocolate!
Whether it’s your “time of the month”, Valentine’s Day, or you’re just craving something sweet, admit it, you love chocolate. And guess what? It’s healthy for you!
Now, before you go to town on that bag of Lindor truffles, you should know two things. One, that only dark chocolate is beneficial to your health (it’s the bitterness that contains the good-for-you stuff). And two, you still need to practice moderation. Chocolate is one of those things that a little is good for you, but too much is bad for you.
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So why is dark chocolate good for you? Well, it contains cacao, “which is naturally high in antioxidants and other natural compounds that are beneficial for cardiovascular health and weight management. In all, about 40 distinct health benefits have been linked to dark chocolate.” And unfortunately milk chocolate doesn’t contain much cacao, it actually has much more sugar and fillers. Just remember that when it comes to dark chocolate, the darker the chocolate, the higher the antioxidants.
Dark unprocessed cacao helps reduce the risk of the following:
- Stroke
- Diabetes
- Coronary heart disease
- Hypertension
- High cholesterol
Eating cacao will actually create more capillaries in your body and heart, which brings more nutrients to your muscles. This will also give you more energy and speed up your metabolism (which helps you shed those unwanted pounds quicker). Just remember only eat a piece the size of a dental floss case.
Want to make dark chocolate even healthier? Use it to cover berries – strawberries, goji berries, blueberries, etc. It’s not only delicious, but you get the nutritional benefits from the berries as well as the chocolate. And combining the two doubles the amount of flavonoids you consume, which protects you from developing type 2 diabetes.
And now I’m hungry. What’s your favorite dark chocolate? Here are some of mine:
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