Let's Talk About Nutrition: Chocolates for Valentine: Feeling guilty? Make it Dark!

No matter as a typical male’s gift to female in the U.S., or a typical female’s gift to male in Japan, chocolate is, and always will be, the evergreen super-star on Valentine’s Day all over the world. However, chocolates and other chocolate products have usually been seen as a sweet but dangerous lure, as well as an enemy against our skinny or wish-to-be skinny waistline. So today, if you are looking for a box of chocolate to make your Valentine perfect but at the same time concerning about staying fit: Dark chocolate would be your perfect choice!

Among the various types of chocolate in the market, dark chocolate contains relatively less sugars and fats as well as a lot higher cocoa contents than other products. Under decades of investigation, we now know that thanks to the various bioactive ingredients that cocoa contains, dark chocolate can actually contribute to our health in many ways when consumed in moderation.

As we all know, oxidative stress contributes to degenerative human diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease through multiple metabolic mechanisms in our body. Recently, natural foods and food-derived antioxidants have received growing attention, because they are known to prevent us from those oxidative damages. Vitamin C is probably the most commonly known antioxidant for the general public, and has also been most popularly used as a dietary supplement to prevent oxidative stress-mediated diseases. What most people may not know is, however, dietary phenolic phytochemicals, in particular, the polyphenols prevalent in cocoa, the flavonoids, are among the most powerful antioxidants identified thus far and has a much stronger antioxidant activity than vitamin C.

Researchers from Cornell University found out in 2003 that cocoa actually contains much higher levels of both total phenolic and flavonoids than black tea, green tea, and red wine, which made it very likely to be the one that contains the highest total phenolic and flavonoids contents of all natural foods. In the same study, cocoa also exerted the highest antioxidant activity, which made it very beneficial to our health in terms of its high-quantity and also high-quality antioxidant content.

Below are several Beneficial Effects shown by studies of cocoa and dark chocolate consumption on human health:

Improve circulation
Improves cardiovascular health
Decreases blood pressure ( promotes arterial dilatation effect)
Lowers cardiac mortality following a first acute myocardial infarction (AMI)
Lowers the risk of total stroke, cerebral infarction, and hemorrhagic stroke
Improves brain function (better cognitive test performance)
Prevention of certain kinds of cancer
Improves insulin sensitivity
Improves immune response
Involves in anti-inflammatory actions
Provides instant enjoyment and pleasure

Here’s some TIPs for you in choosing your Valentine’s chocolate treat:

Go dark. Try the darkest chocolate possible to get more beneficial flavonoids.
Choose low-sugar or fiber enriched dark chocolates. Sugar content may attenuate some of the beneficial effects of cocoa, and it is also bad for your waistline.
Control portions. Although the health benefits that dark chocolates may provide us seems really obvious, the caloric load of chocolate should not be overlooked.