Benefits of Chocolate
Chocolate: sweet and luxurious and a wonderful treat at the end of a hard day. Of course you may have heard that not just any chocolate will do, but dark chocolate specifically. Dark chocolate is made with a lot less sugar than other types of chocolate, and is therefore much less processed than other types of chocolate. Here are ten reasons not to deny yourself such luxury, as long as you go for dark chocolate!
10 Benefits of Chocolate:
- Chocolate can actually make you thinner! A new study finds that people who eat chocolate several times a week are actually leaner than people who don’t eat chocolate regularly. (1)
- Chocolate is very rich in minerals and contains 98 percent of a person’s recommended daily value of manganese, 89 percent DV of copper, 67 percent DV of iron, 58 percent DV of Magnesium, 31 percent DV of phosphorous, 22 percent DV of Zinc, 21 percent DV of potassium, and 10 percent DV of selenium. (2)
- Chocolate may even be able to decrease stress, something that many of us could use these days. (3)
- Chocolate has been shown to ward off heart disease. In a study at the University of Aberdeen and the Institute of Food Research in Norwich it was found that after 2 hours of chocolate consumption, anti-clotting effects were activated. (4)
- Chocolate has also been found to lower blood pressure. Maintaining lower blood pressure can help ward off heart disease and strokes. (5)
- Chocolate may reduce your risk for stroke. In a Swedish study at the Karolinska Institute it was found that for every 50 grams of chocolate per week the risk of stroke was decreased by 14%. (6)
- Chocolate may keep you looking and feeling younger due to its ability to neutralize free radicals. Free radicals are what are responsible for destroying your young and elastic cells. (7) Chocolate has been found to work so well at making you look younger that a special chocolate has been developed which has been found to make the skin of 50-60 year olds look like the skin of 20-30 year olds. (8)
- Chocolate could make you smarter- temporarily. One study found that dark chocolate was able to boost blood flow in key areas of the brain for two to three hours. (9)
- Chocolate consumption has been found to protect the skin from sun damage. In one study it was found that subjects who ate 20g of chocolate rich in flavonals each day took twice as long for their skin to turn red when exposed to light than those who ate chocolate not high in flavonals. (10)
- Lastly, anything tastes great when dipped in chocolate! Use chocolate as a reason to eat more healthy fruit and increase the vitamins in your diet. (11)