{"id":1623,"date":"2011-02-26T04:51:23","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T09:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2011-02-26T04:58:58","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T09:58:58","slug":"chocolate-the-benefits-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1623","title":{"rendered":"Chocolate: the Benefits. Really."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dreamstime_8382606\"<\/a> We write so often about stuff that\u2019s bad for you, that it\u2019s time we wrote about something that\u2019s good for you, like chocolate. Research — real research by respected scientific organizations — has provided evidence that at least some of the fantasies of chocolate lovers \u2013 that they are really doing something positive for themselves as they consume the object of their affections \u2013 are true.<\/p>\n

For lovers of dark chocolate there is the finding that eating dark chocolate is more appetite-satisfying than eating milk chocolate \u2013 and therefore could be seen as contributing to weight control. To arrive at this conclusion, the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen enrolled a group of \u201chealthy young men\u201d to eat 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of chocolate after a 12-hour fast, on two separate occasions. On one, they ate dark chocolate; the other milk chocolate. Two and a half hours later, the subjects were treated to an all-you-can-eat pizza fest. In the session where the men ate dark chocolate, they ate 15 per cent less pizza than they did after consuming milk chocolate, and generally declared themselves to be feeling more sated than when they consumed milk chocolate first.<\/p>\n

But even if you\u2019re not concerned with your weight, chocolate turns out to have emotional benefits. The American Chemical Society\u2019s Journal of Proteome Research published the results of a clinical trial that provided \u201cstrong evidence that the consumption of 40 grams (1.4) ounces) daily during a period of two weeks is sufficient to modify the metabolism of healthy human volunteers.\u201d The volunteers were people who rated themselves as highly stressed, but showed significant reductions in the level of their stress hormones after the two weeks of chocolate eating.<\/p>\n

There were similar findings for reductions in blood pressure and risk of stroke, but there\u2019s a caveat: the findings are only good for dark chocolate, not for milk chocolate. It\u2019s the amount of cacao in the chocolate that counts, meaning that a cup of hot chocolate doesn\u2019t count for much in the way of health benefits. And most of the studies limited the subjects to some 30 grams (a little over an ounce) a day \u2013 not exactly a feast. On the other hand, one could conjecture that within reasonable limits, more might be better \u2013 and leave you happier, healthier and even, lighter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We write so often about stuff that\u2019s bad for you, that it\u2019s time we wrote about something that\u2019s good for you, like chocolate. Research — real research by respected scientific organizations — has provided evidence that at least some of the fantasies of chocolate lovers \u2013 that they are really doing something positive for themselves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[984,985,987],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1623"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1629,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions\/1629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}