But it does depend on what type of chocolate you’re eating! That’s because it’s the cocoa that’s the good bit so the higher the cocoa content the better the chocolate is for you.
So how is chocolate good for you?
The cocoa contains 2 ingredients, flavonoids and polyphenols, which help the bacteria in your gut. There’s a lot of talk about how maintaining good gut bacteria helps us in lots of ways, for example
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supercharging your gut bacteria may be able to prevent diseases like the common cold.
a good mix of bacteria could help to reduce allergic diseases such as asthma, eczema, type 1 diabetes and the bowel disease Crohn’s.
it may actually affect our mood and
looks like it may influence our weight (in a good way !)
Cocoa also produces a chemical in your body which expands your arteries – how often do we hear about clogged up arteries! Yuk.
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So which type of chocolate is best for me?
Which type of chocolate do you prefer?
I lurve milk chocolate -sweet and smooth and creamy. Unfortunately, like most things in life, the things we love to eat are often not the best for us and the same is true of milk chocolate, which has more sugar (and fats) than dark chocolate. Apparently milk chocolate has THE addictive 50:50 calorie ratio i.e. 50% of it’s calories come from sugar and 50% from fats. So if you ever wondered why you can’t put a bar of chocolate down, now you know!
So ladies, its over to the dark side when it comes to the health benefits of chocolate, and the higher the cocoa content the better.
Cheshire Chocolate Studio
www.CheshireChocolateStudio.co.uk
Info taken from Dr Michael Mosley’s ‘The Healthy Gut Diet’