Chocolate Good or Bad

There's been controversy around chocolate for a long time. The problem is with processed chocolate which contains a large amount of sugar and fat. If you look at raw chocolate or cacao, this is where the great benefits are founds.

Raw cacao contains high levels of antioxidants and chemicals that improve your mood. The bad news is that it takes something like dirt! So eat dark chocolate, it has more of the nutrients in it and if it's slightly bitter, that is OK. Look at the content of what you are eating. Eat chocolate in moderation!!

Brain Health Food

You'll love these next foods for brain health. I've spoken about most of them before, but this is in relation to brain health and keeping your brain functioning at a high level.

These three things should be taken in moderation, so a little is good, but a lot is not. The reason they are good is because of the antioxidants that they contain. The first of these is coffee. You can see back in August on the 21st, I talked about the effects of coffee. This was mostly focused on the caffeine effects of coffee. So this is the important thing to know. Again, there is some good in a little coffee. A lot of coffee is not so good. For brain health 1-2 cups a day maximum. This does not mean 1-2 of the extra large grande sizes. This means 1-2 of the 6-8 ounce size cups.

The second food here is red wine. Red wine is loaded with antioxidants. Again, this does not mean you drink a bottle of red wine every day. If you are aware of the Mediterranean diet, this diet is to eat lots of fruits, vegetables, fish, poultry, beans, and nuts and then wash it all down with a glass of red wine. Remember though, if you are trying to lose weight, it may be better for you to not do the alcohol every day.

The last food in this high antioxidant grouping is chocolate. Now I have your attention. The best is to eat raw cacao as it is highest in antioxidants. I have a couple of entries in the blog on chocolate, just click on the word chocolate to see those.

Benefits of Chocolate

Some of the benefits of raw chocolate or cacao are the high levels of antioxidant and magnesium content. Raw cacao is the highest food source of antioxidant. It is higher than green tea or red wine. How great is that. You can protect your cells by eating raw cacao!! So chocolate in it's raw form is good for you!

The high levels of magnesium contained in raw cacao supports heart health, relaxes muscles and eases menstrual cramping, increases flexibility, and improves brain function.

The greatest benefit here is cacao's effect on the brain. It actually assists the body in the production of brain chemicals like serotonin, phenylethylamine, theobromine, and tryptophan. These brain chemicals are responsible for making us feel less depressed, less stressed, and less anxious. Bottom line, these chemicals help increase our pleasure and I sometimes referred to these as the feel good chemcals.

Chocolate

We all love to hear about and eat chocolate. So I thought I would revisit this topic. There has been a controversy around chocolate and whether it is good for you. There is a form of chocolate which is very good for you. The form is raw chocolate or cacao. This is not the sweetened processed milk chocolate that you get in a candy bar.

Raw cacao usually comes in the form of bits of the dried cacao bean. The bits are hard and you definitely don't want to bite them. If you're going to eat raw chocolate, put a few bits in your mount and suck on them until they are soft. Then you can chew them up. If you bite into the hard bits, they taste like dirt or something worse! You can also take the bits and grind them up into a fine powder - like cocoa powder that you buy in the store. Except this will not be sweet and it will not have any hydrogenated fats in it. You can use it to make things like cocoa. Use Stevia to sweeten it.

More on the benefits tomorrow.