Chocolate and diets
Chocolate isn't so bad for you after all.
Chocolate's main constituent is cocoa and cocoa may actually be good for you. According to a recent study Cocoa has higher levels of health promoting antioxidants than both red wine and green tea.
However, the chocolate we buy in stores is generally made from low levels of cocoa and high levels of saturated dairy fats. So the popular chocolate bars are definitely not what you want to eat if you are aiming to look after your waistline and general health.
So, what is the solution? It is 3.00pm on a wet wednesday and your mind is screaming "I must have chocolate". By the way, those cravings are real. You are not just being greedy. There is a chemical reason for your craving, so don't feel guilty about it. It is just nature.
Here is what you need to do.
Firstly stop buying additive bars. By this I mean "peanut brittle, covered in toffee and dipped in smooth milk chocolate" or "biscuit wafers, layered with honeycomb and smothered in a rich chocolate topping". These bars are going to do the most damage and are actually the worst at relieving the cravings (so you end up eating many more of them). Instead opt for a plain bar of high cocoa (85% and above) chocolate. The taste is very different and you may not like it too much the first time you try it, but persevere for a few days and you will find you come to enjoy the rich, smooth, deep and fulfilling taste buch more that you ever did for the standard chocolate bars that you used to eat. After 4 days of eating high cocoa chocolate when i went back and ate a mars bar I found my taste buds had radically changed and I found the mars (which I used to eat regularly) to be too sweet, greasy and lacking in the deep chocolate flavour. It rally doesn't do it for me any more.
The real benefit of high cocoa chocolate is that because the flavour is so much more intense, we find the cravings are satisfied by far smaller quantities. A 62.5g mars bar has 280 calories, but I find that just 20gof high cocoa chocolate is more than enogh to make me feel happy again and has just 110 calories.
The second chocolate treat i have recently discovered is the Cadbury Highlights Low Calorie range of chocolate drinks. Again, I only go for the 'dark chocolate' flavour, but at just 40 calories a cup I really can enjoy these treats without guilt.
