Is Chocolate a Health Food?
Photographs by Robyn Lee
With recent interest surrounding whether chocolate is a health food, I am regularly asked: "Is chocolate a health food?" What's the deal?
It seems like everyday, there's a news report about a medical study confirming chocolate is, in fact, good for heart health, cardiovascular health, and even diabetes. This is added to what we already know about chocolate: it doesn't really cause acne and a chemical inside chocolate actually inhibits the formation of cavities.
Of course, the real answers are not so cut and dry.
Chocolate does have wellness—I prefer that term to health—benefits. But everything meant to improve the flavor of chocolate reduces the number and quantity of the chemicals that are good for us. Also, chocolate is a fairly high fat food, and even though cocoa butter, the fat in chocolate, is a "good" fat (like olive oil) with positive impact on cholesterol metabolism, it's still fat. So don't forget to compensate for the intake of fat calories by cutting back elsewhere.
Take Advantage of Chocolate's Wellness Benefits
Maybe the best way is by eating cacao seeds straight from the pod. Unfortunately, too few of us are in the position to experience this. The seeds are really not that tasty either because the chemicals responsible for many of chocolate's wellness benefits, are very bitter.
Raw chocolate, cocoa nibs, and cocoa powder—because they are minimally processed—retain more of the wellness-giving nutrients. They can be an acquired taste, however, because they also retain a lot of bitterness. Go with roasted cocoa nibs and low-fat natural (non-alkalized) cocoa powder, available in every health food store and most regular grocery stores in the baking aisle. It doesn't take much. Only a tablespoon a day or so.
Chocolate for Breakfast?
And why not incorporate cocoa into the most important meal of the day? No, I am not advocating overly-sweet chocolate-flavored kids' breakfast cereals. As we approach the winter months—when warmth and comfort are priorities—consider tossing cocoa nibs on top of hot breakfast cereals such as oatmeal, farina, or a toasted wheat cereal.
You can also mix in half cocoa powder and half cinnamon to spice up your morning hot cereal. If you like pancakes (and really, who doesn't?), adding cocoa powder to any pancake mix means never having leftovers. Or what about a triple chocolate scone made with cocoa powder, cocoa nibs, and a few chopped bittersweet chocolate pieces to go along with walnuts or pecans?
The Rest of the Day
Moving on to other meals, cocoa nibs are a great addition to the texture of salads, and can be incorporated into a variety of baked goods. I like adding cocoa powder to gravies as a thickener, replacing flour or cornstarch in many stews, and using cocoa powder with balsamic vinegar and spices to add acidity, sweetness, depth, complexity, richness, and visual appeal to plated dishes, soups, and desserts.
A drop-dead delicious appetizer involves sprinkling cocoa nibs over Parmesan tuiles before they go into the oven, then garnishing them with piped dollop of goat cheese, thinned with milk and a chive. Another dessert-ish thing to consider: making your own chocolate syrup. Replace white sugar or corn syrup with agave nectar, Stevia, or some other alternative sweetener to control the sweetness and sugar levels. It also costs a lot less, and you can make it fresh.
Self-Proclaimed 'Healthy' Chocolate
I refuse to eat "healthy" chocolate. When I eat chocolate I want to feel good eating it, not good about eating it. The wellness benefits of chocolate are bonuses, not reasons for eating it. If I want to take vitamin supplements I take vitamin supplements; I don't want my chocolate to be turned into a vitamin supplement.
Do you have any other ideas on adding chocolate to your diet in a healthy way?
About the author: Clay Gordon has been a professional chocolate critic since 2001. His first book on chocolate, Discover Chocolate was selected as a finalist in the International Association of Culinary Professionals' 2008 Cookbook of the Year Awards. A serious chocolate educator, Clay has created and moderates an online community for chocophiles and aspiring chocophiles - The Chocolate Life.
View other entries from Serious Chocolate.
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
7 Comments:
oh so you're saying i can in fact eat cocoa puffs all day and grow up healthy and strong? see, i been telling people that my whole life.
foodinmouth at 3:35PM on 10/15/08
Me eating chocolate keeps the people around me healthy. Therefore, chocolate is a health food.
Jeffala at 4:16PM on 10/15/08
It certainly helps my mental health!
juliec at 4:42PM on 10/15/08
As a nutritional science undergraduate, I did my senior research paper on the effect of chocolate on cardiovascular disease-related blood lipids (ie, LDL, HDL, triglycerides, etc). Chocolate is an area that I am particularly passionate about and know a bit about.
Chocolate provides "wellness" benefits in two ways: it has high amounts of antioxidants (in the form of flavanols), and the fat in chocolate prevents LDL from becoming oxidized.
The antioxidants in chocolate exist in the cocoa solids, not the fat (cocoa butter). Roasting, alkalizing ("Dutch-processing"), and adding milk all decrease the amount of antioxidants in chocolate. As the author pointed out, raw cocoa nibs and cocoa powder will have the most benefit.
However, that doesn't mean that these are the only worth-while forms. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate and Dutched cocoa powder still pack a powerful antioxidant punch! They just have less punch than the other forms mentioned.
Per gram, natural (not alkalized) cocoa powder has:
Now, those values are PER GRAM. Per serving is another matter - you generally wouldn't eat that much cocoa powder at a time. A serving of cocoa powder is considered 5g, and a serving of chocolate (dark or milk) is considered 40g. Given that...
Per serving, natural (not alkalized) cocoa powder has:
So, based on serving size, your best bet is to have dark chocolate or natural cocoa powder. But, all types of chocolate are beneficial.
The type of fat in chocolate is important too. Cocoa butter is 60% saturated fat, and 33% monounsaturated fat (the kind that's in olive oil). These types of fat don't oxidize very readily. This is important because when fat is carried around the body by LDL ("bad" cholesterol), if it oxidizes it can be depositied into arterial plaque (hardening of the arteries). If it doesn't oxidize, it's fine.
So the type of fat protects LDL from being oxidized, and the antioxidants add further protecting. This adds up to a very beneficial food product!
The best time to eat chocolate is at the end of a meal (dessert) because it will help protect the post-meal rise in LDL. I like the author's ideas of cocoa in pancake batter and hot chocolate - they are great! Finishing the meal with a couple of pieces of fine quality chocolate works for me, too. Combine that with a glass of port and you double your antioxidants. :)
ilovebutter at 4:55PM on 10/15/08
I'm just going to enjoy my chocolate. I like this Michael Pollan quote: Vitamins and nutrients are important, but thinking of food as medicine obscures the other reasons to love eating. Not only is food a way to experience culture, it's also one of the most profound ways we interact with nature and each other.
aharste at 3:18PM on 10/16/08
@aharste -
This is very close to my sentiment about chocolate though it articulates the importance of connectedness in a way that I talk about in a different context. Thanks for pointing this one out.
@ilovebutter -
I have a lot of trouble with continuing the debate about serving size when it comes to chocolate for the simple reason that all of the number with respect to the chemical makeup of cacao products that might have an effect on human health are way to general. The numbers the USDA publishes on cocoa powder for example talk about two types, natural and alkalized. However, there are huge differences in chemical makeup based on the genetics of the cacao and other aspects of processing.
In order to be of any possible meaningful therapeutic value, I think it's necessary to test every single cacao product individually and report on the specifics of that product. It's also probably necessary to go beyond simple ORAC evaluation and look into much more precise analyses as, for example the presence of a specific iron cation that is involved in the metabolism of other chemical components of cacao.
For me, I think a better measure (because it is a more closely corresponding measure) than serving size would be to report antioxidant activity on a "per 100 calories" and/or "per 100 fat calories" basis. If you take a look at it that way, cocoa powder comes out far ahead of chocolate.
Clay Gordon at 1:09PM on 10/23/08
I can only speak from my own experience. Been eating dark chocolate 70%++ for about a year now. My cholesterol level came way down. Don't know if dark chocolate is "the" key factor. But it might have helped. At least, it can't hurt!
chocolateaddict at 5:27PM on 08/15/09