Valentine’s Day chocolate, a nutritious guilty pleasure
With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, and the gift of chocolate almost guaranteed (do we even have to mention Feb. 15, and the sales of those treats?), all of you love birds and independent gems needn’t look any further for a reason to give in to the temptation.
Study after study has proven that dark chocolate is actually good for you. How, you ask? A bean called cacao in the chocolate is full of healthy chemicals like flavoonols and theobromine, allowing the bean to hold the upper-hand against bacteria in your body.
Without chocolate, the milk, sugar, and butter, cacao isn’t the most appetizing to the say the least. Thus, dark chocolate is born. To get the most nutrients out of your guilty pleasure, make sure to stick to healthy chocolate with at least 70 per cent of the bean.
Eating small amounts can certainly help as well. A good gauge would be about four dark chocolate bars a week (and we’re not complaining about that).
Here are some more benefits to eating dark chocolate:
A healthy, happy heart.
In a nine-year study in Sweden, 31,000 women who ate one-to-two servings of dark chocolate every week saw their risk of heart problems reduced by one third.
Weight loss!
Proven to be more filling, dark chocolate reduces cravings for sweet, salty, and fatty foods. Snack on some dark chocolate and you’ll find it easier to have small portions, and stick to healthier diet.
Preventing diabetes, one piece of chocolate at a time.
In a study in Italy, participants who ate a bar of dark chocolate once a day for 15 days saw the potential for insulin resistance drop by almost half.
Stress reliever.
Emotional eating – we all do it. It turns out, however, that we shouldn’t be feeling so guilty about it. Scientists in Switzerland (leave it to the Swiss to give us a reason to eat their delicious chocolate) found that when anxious people eat an ounce-and-a-half of dark chocolate every day for two weeks, their stress hormone levels decreased incredibly.
Putting an end to that sunburn.
Study participants proved that after three months of eating chocolate with high levels of flavanols, their skin took twice as long to develop that dreaded sunburn. Adding to the study, participants who ate chocolate with low-flavanol levels didn’t get the same protection.
It makes you… smarter?
You read that right. Studying for that midterm? Pop open a dark chocolate bar, as it’ll reduce your stress levels in addition to pumping up your brain power when you really need it.
A study at the University of Nottingham proved that drinking cocoa rich in flavanols boosts blood flow to key parts of the brain for two to three hours, resulting in improved performance and alertness.