Chocolatey Goodness

Finally I get to talk about it on my blog. Not like anybody's really stopping me. Anyway, I'm a big chocoholic. Yes I admit it. I love chocolate to no end. Ask my dad, he's gonna tell you that I even attempted to bake a chocolate cake. I've never baked anything in my entire life before and I love chocolate so much that my first attempt at baking a cake can actually be called a success.

Yes, it looked like a cake. Yes, it tasted like chocolate cake. My mom even loved the icing, even though I thought it was too sweet even for me.

Anyway, when it comes to food, I choose what I eat and I choose to eat it in moderation. So no matter how much I love chocolate, I am not gonna put myself in danger even if someone offered to pay me a million dollars. a million dollars to eat a pound of chocolate I can do, but a million dollars to eat one and a half, no thanks. Okay, so as a lot of people know, chocolate can rot your teeth, help you gain extreme amounts of weight since it's still fat even if you call it good fat.

Well, not all of chocolate is good fat. Some chocolates are just eaten for pleasure and not just for health purposes. Even so, chocolate can still fit anyone's lifestyle as a healthy snack. Would you believe that French doctors once prescribed chocolates to women patients for a broken heart?

Chocolate as medication
How is this so? Well, recent studies show that yummy chocolate triggers the release of feel-good endorphins in our brain. Some researchers based in San Diego, California even reported that chocolate has active substances taht have the same effect on the brain as marijuana. Not the bad stuff, just the good stuff, you know, it makes you feel good.

Chocolate also has caffeine, theobromine (a mild stimulant) and phenylethylamine, which can raise endorphins. I personally have a few chocolates before I start studying, helps me concentrate.

Chocolate as health food
Yes I know everyone wants to hear chocolate as a health food. Kind of dispels the bad reviews about having the pleasure food. We all know that everyone wants to build up the antioxidants in their bodies. Chocolate has very high levels of catechins, which are compounds that act as antioxidants. My favorite kind of chocolate---the dark chocolate has as much as 41mg of flavanols in every 25g. Flavanols are powerful antioxidants that guard against plaque build-up in artery walls. Apparently dark chocolate has more antioxidants that a cup of green tea, an apple of a glass of red wine. chocolate is also a good source of essential nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, niacin and riboflavin.

Looks like I'm grabbing myself a bar again tomorrow. Yummm.

Limit chocolate intake
Okay, so even though there are really great advantages in having chocolate, you can't really have just like that. Chocolate only qualifies in your diet as healthy as long as you have plenty of fruits and vegetables in it as well. And you wouldn't really want to have too much chocolate. That would be too much fat in your diet. Limit yourself to 25g a day at most. Have the dark chocolate since it's not too sweet and its got a little bitter taste to it. Have some chocolate that has 70% cocoa solids at least.

I should've talked about chocolates during Valentine's season. But it's my blog and my rules, so I write whenever I get the urge to.