There are many benefits to dark chocolate and it is often considered a bad food. It is bad when it's milk or white chocolate but anything above 70% can contain the following.
A 100 gram bar of dark chocolate with 70-85% cocoa contains:
- 11 grams of fiber.
- 67% of the RDA for Iron.
- 58% of the RDA for Magnesium.
- 89% of the RDA for Copper.
- 98% of the RDA for Manganese.
- It also has plenty of potassium, phosphorus, zinc and selenium
It is also a powerful source of anti-oxidants which trap nasty free radicals in the body and prevent them from damaging cells and causing illness.
It may also help improve blood flow and lower blood pressure as a result of the flavanols in dark chocolate which stimulate the endothelium, the lining of arteries, to produce Nitric Oxide (NO), which is a gas and causes them to relax.
Other studies have shown it can lower LDL Cholesterol (bad) while helping to increase HDL Cholesterol (good).
It can also help protect your skin from the sun! The flavonols can protect against sun-induced damage by improving blood flow to the skin and increase skin density and hydration.
Finally it can help improve brain function by increasing blood flow to the brain. Cocoa may also significantly improve cognitive function in elderly people with mental impairment. It also improves verbal fluency and several risk factors for disease.
Please refer to this link here to see all the scientific research that lead to these claims.
So here's the fun part. How can you increase the amount of high quality Cocoa in your diet? One easy way is to ditch the regular, sugar filled chocolate bars and replace with 70% cocoa bars or higher. You may feel you need only 1 or 2 squares to get your chocolate hit!
Add some 100% Coco to your plain yogurt or any baking you are doing. I use Green and Blacks 100% Organic Coco and you typically can find this in most large supermarkets.
Also here are some recipes on the blog that contain tasty 100% cocoa.
Enjoy! I knew you would all love this one!
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