That big and delicious Tobleron chocolate bar is one of my favorites. It is made from the seeds of the cacao tree, a native of some parts of South America. The nibs of the hearts of the seeds are ground and liquefied into pure chocolate, called the chocolate liquor. And this liquor is separated into two components, i.e., the cocoa solids (non-fatty part) and the cocoa butter (fatty part).
Of course, Tobleron is just one of the many forms chocolate is made available in the market. Depending on the relative amounts of cocoa solids and butter, as well as sugar and milk added into it, chocolate may come in pure liquor form, called unsweetened or baking chocolate, or with a little fat and sugar in it, called dark chocolate, or lots of milk, on top of the fat and sugar to make milk chocolate. Beware of white chocolate. Supposedly made from pure cocoa butter, some are made from vegetable oils making it a non-chocolate chocolate.
There’s nothing ‘dark’ about dark chocolate:
The less sugar and milk in the chocolate, the more bitter it tastes and the better it is, health-wise.
Recent studies show that taking dark chocolate every day can reduce stress and the darker it is, the better.
Dark chocolate contains polyphenols, an antioxidant that could help fight chronic inflammation of tissues in the circulatory system, minimizing the risk from cardiovascular diseases. These same antioxidants could help reduce the chances of developing cancer by preventing cell damage that can lead to tumor growth.
One study among Italians who ate moderate amounts of dark chocolate showed that consuming moderate amounts (about 6.7 grams of dark chocolate, about 1.5 Hershey kisses) resulted to lower levels of a protein associated with inflammation. And another showed that chocolate, like aspirin, makes blood platelets less likely to clump together into dangerous blood-vessel blocking clots.
For stress-free living:
A two-week study by scientists led by Sunil Kochhar of the Nestle Research Center in Switzerland, among people who claimed to be highly stressed showed that dark chocolate can lower the levels of stress hormones, cortisol and catecholamines.
The study made the subjects eat 40 grams of dark chocolate every day for two weeks after which doctors took samples from their urine and blood plasma for analysis. All subjects showed lower levels of the above stress hormones.
The caveat of the study was that there were only 30 participants in a very limited time
For happy living:
I once knew of a grossly overweight girl. She was just not big but heavy. One time I saw her gleefully gorging a huge slice of chocolate cake and a quart of chocolate ice-cream right after. And she was smiling all the way through her snack. By ordinary standards, she will not live long if she’s not going to have a life-style change. But she will definitely die happy.
With this added dimension to chocolate, unless one is averse to sweet food (which I am) or is diabetic, gorging on it opens another avenue for happy living - or dying.
