If you really love ... Chocolate

If you really love someone, don’t give them chocolate for valentines....

I know, I know, celebrations are not the same without chocolate.... why do we do this to ourselves? Christmas, Valentines, Easter, you name it.... every single holiday comes with chocolate.

It tastes good! Fair enough but let’s make better choices, let's try and get the benefits of chocolate not only the bad stuff.

Read up and keep in mind:

Chocolate

While the delicious dessert may be packed with antioxidants, the high sugar content of most processed bars offsets many of those benefits.

Cacao, the base of chocolate, can be a healthy addition to most diets. In its natural form, cacao can lower blood pressure, improve circulation, and reduce the risk of diabetes and coronary heart disease. A bit of dark chocolate can give our thinking skills regular levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

Extensive processing as well as added sugar and milk, often strip cacao of its nutritional one-two punch, causing a potential super food to drop to a fallen idol status. Luckily, healthy options exist giving chocolate a chance to redeem itself. When there’s a choice of white, milk, or dark chocolate, go for dark. Whole milk makes up the majority of milk chocolate and may interfere with the body’s absorption of antioxidants. To stave off added fat and excess sugar, look for dark chocolate with cacao content above 70 percent. In fact, the higher the cacao content, the better. Be warned though: Dark chocolate tends to taste more bitter than its milky counterpart, so if choosing super-dark varieties, opt for bars which contain some healthy ingredients like almonds or dried cherries for a flavour (and nutrition) boost.

Another chocolate worth going cuckoo for is raw chocolate, a dairy-free, unprocessed option. Raw chocolate bars are often sweetened with agave or palm sugar, which have a lower glycaemic index than cane sugar. Raw chocolate packs a distinct, deep flavour paired with a ruthless stab at the wallet, but luckily, a little goes a long way. Look for raw chocolate at local health food stores in bar or powder form. Heat the powder with water or almond milk, and sweeten with stevia for some homemade hot chocolate.

To get the benefits of cacao without the bulk, reach for cacao nibs (dry-roasted cacao beans with a nutty flavour). At the end of the day, even the most nutritious kinds of chocolate are healthful … but only in moderation!

Nxxx