Is the Dark Chocolate Really Healthy?

What they told you when you were a child that chocolate destroys your teeth and makes you fat has got an odd twist: many researches are coming with an avalanche of good effects chocolate has on your health. That's why many do not bother finding an excuse for tucking in chocolate, especially if dark. And with the Christmas and the New Year...

But these researches are made in fact on cocoa, and how many chocolates do really contain 60-75% cocoa powder? The medical journal "Lancet" warns that most health claims about plain chocolate could be misleading.

Plain chocolate abounds in flavanols, plant molecules showed by many researches to control the arterial tension, by increasing the amount of nitric oxide in the blood. Studies showed that dark chocolate is as effective as the antihypertensive drugs are and it can decrease by 50% the risk of a heart attack, coronary disease by 10%, and premature death by 8%.

Flavanols help the process of sugar metabolization, so dark chocolate helps reduce the risk of developing diabetes. They also increase "good" cholesterol and lowers the "bad" one. Flavanols would also improve blood circulation to the brain for two to three hours after you've eaten chocolate, by dilating the brain blood vessels, allowing a larger blood flow (implicit of oxygen). This way, the brain would fight off exhaustion, insomnia and aging, improving memory and learning.

Chocolate with 85 % cocoa was found to fight off chronic fatigue (the question is: is there any chocolate containing so much cocoa?).

The editorial in the "Lancet" reminds us that many manufacturers remove flavanols (like epicatechin) due to their bitter taste, while the final product is enriched in fat and sugar, chemicals harmful to the heart and arteries, with an opposite effect to that signaled by the researches. Milk chocolate has even less flavanols, and white chocolate has almost none.

The bitterest chemical found in chocolate, theobromine, an alkaloid similar to caffeine, was found to fight off tooth decay, being more efficient than fluoride in strengthening the crystalline structure of teeth against erosion by acid-producing bacteria (linked to tooth decay). But how many would eat such a bitter chocolate?

"Dark chocolate can be deceptive. When chocolate manufacturers make confectionery, the natural cocoa solids can be darkened and the flavanols, which are bitter, removed, so even a dark-looking chocolate can have no flavanol. Consumers are also kept in the dark about the flavanol content of chocolate because manufacturers rarely label their products with this information", warns the "Lancet".

"The devil in the dark chocolate is the fat, sugar and calories it also contains. To gain any health benefit, those who eat a moderate amount of flavanol-rich dark chocolate will have to balance the calories by reducing their intake of other foods - a tricky job for even the most ardent calorie counter. So, with the holiday season upon us, it might be worth getting familiar with the calories in a bar of dark chocolate versus a mince pie and having a calculator at hand."

In the end, the best source of flavanols remain fruits, vegetables, tea and... wine! And others of the chocolate's chemicals that are pharmacologically active, like tryptophan, phenylethylamine, tyramine and cannabinoids, are found in higher amounts in other types of food that are less appealing than chocolate.