The Health Benefits of Chocolate

Key points:

- Chocolate is full of antioxidants, minerals, healthy fatty acids, and psychoactive compounds

- It might promote cardiovascular health by increasing your levels of circulating nitric oxide

- The difference between cacao and cocoa

- The darker the chocolate the better

- Be aware of other ingredients in chocolate

- Supplementing with cocoa supplements

Wouldn’t it be awesome if chocolate would make you healthy and extend your lifespan? Well, it might all be true! Don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of chocolate. I am talking about the dark bitter goodness, not the half-sugar-half-milk product.

Dark chocolate is derived from the cacao bean which is high in bioactive compounds called polyphenols specifically flavanols which have been shown to increase levels of circulating nitric oxide – a key factor in maintaining vascular endothelial health. There are numerous other health benefits to consuming chocolate daily.

Let’s dive in and find out if this amazing food can have positive effects on our longevity.

The ancient cacao

Chocolate didn’t begin as an egg-shaped treat for kids or a heart-shaped present for lovers but in the form of a bitter, sacred beverage reserved exclusively for male warriors and priests. It was the raw cacao beans, the seeds of the Theobroma cacao, a tropical evergreen tree native to the Americas, that ancient civilisations found to be a powerful, intoxicating food, suitable only for special ceremonies.

Chocolate is medicine

Modern medicine strongly supports the fact that chocolate is darn good for your health. Here are the four main reasons.

• Antioxidants: these compounds are known for reducing inflammation, supporting healthy nerve function, boosting brain health and mood, and even enhancing longevity through activating anti-aging pathways.

The flavanols in chocolate can improve your nitric oxide (NO) production. NO is an important vasodilator (dilates blood vessels). This can help lower blood pressure, and improve cardiovascular health while promoting better sexual function. It allows blood, nutrients, and oxygen to flow better throughout your body.

• Minerals: dark chocolate has impressive mineral content. If you were to scarf down 100 grams of 85% dark chocolate (not recommended as it is a least three times the serving size) you would get 67% RDA for iron, 58% RDA for magnesium, 89% RDA for copper, and 98% RDA for manganese. Pretty impressive, right?

• Fatty Acids: dark chocolate is rich in healthy fats. It provides a healthy mixture of monounsaturated (oleic acid) and saturated fatty acids (palmitic and stearic acid). Oleic acid is the same fat that gives olive oil many of its heart-healthy benefits. Saturated fat, unfortunately, demonised by popular beliefs, is also essential for your health, especially hormonal balance. We’ll dive into this topic in another article.

• Psychoactive Compounds: chocolate contains a mixture of mind-altering substances. Looks like the ancient Aztecs knew what they were talking about! Some of these compounds include Endocannabinoids (the “bliss molecules”), Xanthines like theobromine and caffeine (mild stimulants that can improve blood flow and cognitive function), and Tryptophan, (in the body it is converted into serotonin, which is an important neurotransmitter that is known as ‘a happy hormone’. It can improve mood, sleep, and ability to deal with stress and relieve anxiety and depression)

Is it cacao or cocoa?

If you read food labels you will come across all sorts of names that might confuse you. Let’s try to clarify this and explain how the process of making chocolate works by explaining the terms (credit to Ben Greenfield’s blog post):

• Cacao: “Cacao” refers to the beans derived from the Theobroma cacao tree. The word also usually applies to any unroasted, fermented, and dried version, such as cacao nibs or cacao powder.

• Cocoa: Once the cacao has been roasted, it becomes “cocoa.” From there, it’s often crushed into “cocoa nibs.”

• Cocoa Liquor: Not to be confused with an alcoholic beverage, “cocoa liquor” simply refers to the paste that results from grinding cocoa nibs into a paste.

• Cocoa Butter: When you separate the fat from cocoa liquor, it’s called “cocoa butter.”

• Cocoa Powder: “Cocoa powder” is made by removing some of the cocoa butter from the cocoa liquor, sifting it, and grinding it into a fine powder.

• Chocolate: Chocolate today is essentially the combination of cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, and a sweetener.

So there you go. Unfortunately, even among chocolatiers, there is confusion in interchangeably using the terms cacao and cocoa, but at least you know better. However, to put cacao in any food product, the roasting process is unavoidable. More important than clinging to the question of which one is in your food is knowing its content percent in the product and what other ingredients are there.

The darker the better

The description of how dark your chocolate is will tell you the amount of cocoa derivatives (cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, and cocoa powder) relative to other ingredients such as sugar, milk, or preservatives.

The higher the percentage the more antioxidants and other abovementioned benefits the chocolate has. In fact, the antioxidant content in chocolate can vary by up to 10x! Chocolate with 24-30% cocoa contains 1.8 mmol/100 g antioxidants, 40-65% cocoa has 7.2 mmol/100 g antioxidants, and 70-99% cocoa provides you with 10.9 mmol/100 g antioxidants.

What makes your chocolate sweet?

Sweeteners are an important factor to consider when purchasing chocolate. If you are consuming chocolate for health reasons (not the occasional sweet-tooth-nibble) don’t look for chocolates with less than 85% cocoa.

Look at the ingredients list and absolutely avoid corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial sweeteners such as saccharin, aspartame, sucralose, neotame, and acesulfame-K. Instead, opt for sweeteners like organic cane sugar, tapioca syrup, agave syrup, and sugar alcohols: erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol, mannitol, and maltitol (the latter can cause digestive upset and act as a laxative). Look for products with minimal amounts of these sweeteners. 

Even better yet, try to find a chocolate sweetened with stevia, dates, allulose, coconut sugar, and monk fruit extract.

Supplementing with cocoa supplements

A recent 3.6-year study by Sesso et al. was looking to explore the idea that supplementing with cocoa supplements could reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease events. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive either cocoa flavanols (500 mg per day) or a placebo. The group taking cocoa supplements had a 27% relative risk reduction in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) deaths compared to the placebo group.

Several other studies confirmed that flavanol-rich cocoa beans can lower blood pressure, inhibit platelet activation, and improve endothelial function. There appear to be both acute effects within hours of consumption as well as longer-term effects over the course of months.

The cocoa supplements used in these studies are more concentrated in polyphenols than the everyday chocolate bars we might buy in a store. Cocoa extract supplementation removes the plant’s natural variability in flavanol concentration. As a result of the extraction process and selection of high-flavanol beans, the supplements contain much higher levels of flavanols than typical raw cocoa powder.

So, how much chocolate would you have to eat to get the same benefits? Well, the supplements contained 500 mg of flavanols per day. Pure cocoa powder contains up to 50 mg of polyphenols per gram, but of course, chocolate is not pure cocoa.

Dark chocolate is estimated to have about 23.4% nonfat cocoa solids which would equate to around 57 mg of flavanols in a 30g serving - around 8 to 10 times less than supplements. Milk chocolate contains about five times less flavanols than dark chocolate, and white chocolate notoriously lacks nonfat cocoa solids altogether.

So to reach the same amount of the beneficial compounds one would have to consume enormous amounts of dark chocolate which would mean excessive calories as well as probable digestive issues. Not to mention you would find it repulsive only after a few days.

If you wanted to obtain the same amount of flavanols by consuming milk chocolate, you would have to stuff your face with fifty servings, or over 8,000 calories of milk chocolate every day! This gives the phrase ‘death by chocolate’ a whole new meaning!

Conclusion

Chocolate is an important commodity in the modern world. Unfortunately, most of its production comes from third-world countries, especially Ivory Coast and Ghana. Just like with clothing, coffee, and cotton, your purchasing choices shape the world of commerce. Find chocolate producers that have certifications like Fairtrade, Direct Trade, Fair for Life, and Rainforest Alliance to support sustainable production.

Dark chocolate can be an important player in your health journey since it is high in healthy fats, low in sugar, and loaded with a potent mix of antioxidants and minerals. To top it up it contains many mind-altering psychoactive compounds, caffeine just being one of them.

If you are a big fan of milk chocolate I encourage you to slowly increase the percentage of cocoa in your chocolate and try consuming 85-90% chocolate for a month. You won’t be able to go back, and all of a sudden a guilty feeling of having chocolate will turn into a treat that keeps you healthy and fit!

Resources:

https://bengreenfieldlife.com/article/the-history-benefits-of-chocolate-part-1/

https://peterattiamd.com/can-cocoa-help-prevent-cardiovascular-death/

https://www.kakaoplattform.ch/about-cocoa/cocoa-facts-and-figures