07 Track 7

Unit 9

The story of chocolate

Chapter 2

The truth about chocolate

page 113

The truth about chocolate

If you ever crave chocolate, you’re not alone − millions of people around the world admit to being “chocolate addicts”. But you wondered if this addiction is damaging to your health?

Let’s separate the myths from the facts concerning this popular food.

1) Eating chocolate makes you happier.

It’s not your imagination. Chocolate contains over three hundred known chemicals, which stimulate areas of the brain that enable us to feel pleasure. Chocolate contains small amounts of theobromine, which help to enhance your mood, and caffeine, which gives you more energy and is also found in coffee and tea.

2) Chocolate makes you fat.

Chocolate is commonly regarded as a fattening food that contains no nutritional value. In fact, cocoa beans are full of antioxidants that are beneficial to health.

However, they undergo a lot of processing to remove their distinctive bitterness, which also removes a large portion of the antioxidants. Most store-bought chocolates have high sugar and fat content, and only small amounts of cocoa.

Eating these and other high-calorie chocolate desserts, like cakes and cookies, can indeed cause you to gain weight.

3) Chocolate is good for your heart.

There have been studies in recent years linking chocolate to a healthy heart. Cocoa contains chemicals called flavonoids which fight heart disease by lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

But you’ll have to consume dark chocolate with a high proportion of cocoa if you want to see the benefits, or just eat more fruits and vegetables, which contain flavonoids as well and in higher amounts.

“If you want to reduce your heart disease risk, there are much better places to start than at the bottom of a box of chocolates,” says Victoria Taylor from the British Heart Foundation.

4) Chocolate gives you pimples

Despite what you might have heard from your mother or grandmother, there is absolutely no evidence that chocolate gives you pimples or acne. It’s not chocolate that causes problems, but they highly-processed nature of the products containing chocolate, and their high levels of sugar and fat.

While it’s great that chocolate isn’t to blame, bad skin could still indicate a bad diet.

5) Chocolate causes tooth decay.

This is another myth that just won’t go away. It’s not chocolate itself that causes tooth decay, but the sugar in chocolate products − and bad teeth-brushing habits!

In fact, it is believed that cocoa butter forms a coating over our teeth, and this might actually protect rather than hurt them.

As with most things, chocolate only becomes a danger when you overdo it. It’s important to remember that most of the health benefits of chocolate come from cocoa, which is why dark chocolate is the healthiest option.

So, choose your chocolate wisely, eat it in moderation, and you’ll get the best of both − worlds, happiness and health.