Yesterday was National milk chocolate day in the US – but why not spread the love over here?
Chocolate is a wonderful thing. Soft, silky, and smooth – it’s often hard to resist. In fact, the UK consumes over 660,000 tonnes of chocolate a year! That’s big business.
Chocolate companies make their money on you being unable to stop yourself from grabbing a bar with your lunchtime meal deal or pulling out a bag when you’re sat down in the evening.
Unfortunately, this isn’t great for your health. Chocolate can in fact have some very beneficial effects upon our mind and body. Yet, not the commercial type. Chocolate isn’t inherently bad for you. In fact, cacao contains a lot of beneficial properties including high levels of antioxidants. A 2014 study actually found that dark chocolate can help to restore flexibility to your arteries whilst also preventing white blood cells from sticking to your blood vessels. The issue is that milk chocolate often comes full of added sugar and other ‘not-so-goods’ which make it hyper-palatable and therefore, the calories can really pile on.
In order to improve the benefits, you can swap milk chocolate for dark chocolate. Dark chocolate tends to be higher in antioxidants, contain less sugar, and also, less ‘more-ish’ (meaning you’re less likely to keep going back for more). Really, you want to be aiming for chocolate with the least amount of ingredients. Obviously, if they’ve added things like nuts and fruit, then that’s not so bad, but sugar is the main thing to avoid.
All in all, Chocolate isn’t so bad as long as you’re not gorging on it every day, and if you pick the right sources, then it can actually be quite good for you.