Did Someone Say Dark Chocolate? Here are 3 surprising benefits
A life without chocolate? Not something I want to participate in! If you’re looking to add a bit of sweetness into your life, read more for 3 surprising benefits of dark chocolate plus a few ideas of how to mix into snacks and desserts!
There are a lot of things I am willing to do to improve my health and work on my daily nutrition, however, giving up chocolate is simply not one of them. The good news? It doesn’t need to be, there’s a lot of benefits to incorporating dark chocolate into daily nutrition. I mean truly, picturing a world without chocolate is like a world without water- that might be a bit dramatic but if you feel just as passionate about having a sweet treat from time to time, then you might just love what you’re about to read! Dark chocolate, for one, is delicious. But it notably has many healthy benefits too! Dark chocolate contains antioxidants, can positively impact brain function, can support heart health and more.
Antioxidants
One of the most eye-catching benefits of dark chocolate is the high antioxidant content. Antioxidants are any substance that alleviates free radicals (these can be created by many things, whether it be unstable molecules from metabolic processes to breathing in polluted air to eating fried foods etc.).
A good way to visualize what antioxidants do in the body is picturing a city that has a lot of debris, what would the city do in this instance? Well, it is likely they would call in garbage men and women or volunteers to help clean up the debris in the city. The garbage men and women are the antioxidants cleaning up with “debris” or free radicals. This helps ensure too many free radicals don’t build up, to cause something called oxidative stress which is detrimental to health. The main antioxidants present in dark chocolate are polyphenols and flavonoids. When comparing to milk and white chocolate, the total content of these two antioxidants in dark chocolate is five times higher (Semanta et. al., 2022). Given this, dark chocolate takes the cake as the most optimal sweet treat choice for its high antioxidant content, inflammation lowering properties and more!
Brain Function
We’ve established above that the polyphenol and flavenoid content in dark chocolate largely stands out due to the higher antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties this provides vs. other chocolates. Interestingly enough, brain function can be positively influenced from the polyphenols in dark chocolate also providing benefits like increasing cerebral blood flow and improving cognitive function (Sasaki et. al., 2024). The polyphenols in dark chocolate can also allow for neuroprotective properties with lowering inflammation and working against oxidative stress (Martin et., al, 2020). I don’t know about you, but connecting that I can positively impact brain health, lower inflammation and more I will be incorporating dark chocolate for the foreseeable future.
Heart Health
When it comes to heart health, maybe dark chocolate isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. We typically look towards fiber, whole grains and limiting saturated fats in this space of promoting heart health, just to name a few when it comes to nutrition. However, dark chocolate certainly fits into a heart healthy diet and actually may provide some benefits here (bonus points dark chocolate also contains a bit of fiber too)! If improving blood pressure is something you are interested in, noteably, cocoa is a major dietary source of polyphenols, including flavanols, which have been associated with reduced blood pressure. You might be wondering how it is able to aid in lowered blood pressure. Well, flavanol increases the production of nitric oxide which in turn lowers oxidative stress and promotes blood flow (Amoah et. al., 2022). We might just be seeing a trend here, the antioxidants, specifically polyphenols and flavanols seem to provide a lot of health benefits in many different areas, heart health being among them.
Final Notes
Now that we’ve established so many great benefits of dark chocolate, if you are set on making a permanent place for this delectable treat in your nutrition, here are a few tips! When looking at which dark chocolate to buy, aiming for 70% or higher cocoa is ideally the best route to take. Why 70% or higher? There tends to be a higher antioxidant content the higher the cocoa! If you’re wondering where to add in dark chocolate to your current routine, a few staple areas I recommend are sprinkling dark chocolate chips into a greek yogurt bowl, adding to a smoothie, melting down and mixing with milk for hot chocolate, or having a few pieces after dinner! With dark chocolate, the possibilities are endless for where to mix it into your nutrition rotation!
