Chocolate Is Not a Superfood (but Still Super)
We’ve heard these claims before, but now that February has come, they are back: chocolate is full of antioxidants. Its numerous health benefits have been proven. It’s really good for you, isn’t it? Not really. Let’s take a closer look.
“Superfood” is a buzzing marketing word, not a nutritional term
From a nutritional standpoint, the term “superfood” doesn’t make sense . Marketers and the media love to stir up food hype by highlighting a nutrient or two and then labeling it as “superfood.” According to Mother Jones, the food industry is undergoing boom and bust periods driven by health benefits , because selling food would otherwise be an economically boring task: 300 million people need food for 300 million people every year. To yawn.
Studies have shown only small health effects, especially cocoa extracts and sometimes dark chocolate, but marketers are using these results to sell milk chocolate and products like smoothies , snacks, and really expensive candy . Health claims make us eat more food and perceive it as healthier, and not just on the label on the packaging. Researchers call this effect a health halo .
In Europe, the word “superfood” cannot appear on labels unless it is backed up by some scientific evidence. There is no such rule in the USA.
Where does chocolate research come from?
Guess who is funding a lot of research on the health benefits of cocoa? Nestle . Mars . Research arm of the Chocolate Manufacturers’ Association of America . The funding source does not guarantee that the results will be incorrect or biased, especially if the researchers work at a university. One researcher in another field, genetically modified crops, said at a conference I attended, “Funding for industry does not affect results, but it does the trick.”
This explains why there is so much emphasis on chocolate year after year, although it is far from the only source of antioxidants in our diet.
There is a reason you are reading about chocolate right now. Interest in the health benefits of chocolate usually peaks around February of each year. Valentine’s Day is a handy news feed, and companies would like to make you think about eating chocolate at this time of year. You will still see chocolate in stores and consider impulse buying, but you were just reminded that chocolate is good for you. So it’s not even a concession, is it? It is practically healthy food.
What does the research actually say?
There is so much research done on chocolate and cocoa that I cannot cover all the claims, but let’s take care of some important points.
- There are indeed a lot of antioxidants in chocolate. According to in vitro measurements (think test tubes, not humans), dark chocolate has the ability to absorb oxygen radicals, or an ORAC of 20,816 . This puts it just above raspberries, pecans and ginger, but below sorghum, acai, rose hips and various spices. The only problem? The USDA stopped publishing ORAC tables in 2012 because ORAC values ​​do not correlate with biological activity. This is a pointless little thing.
- Is cocoa good for the heart? Yes, sort of. A Cochrane summary reports that cocoa products (including normal-sized dark chocolate chunks in some studies) can lower blood pressure by two to three points. None of the randomized controlled trials were long-term, and none measured the effect of cocoa products on important outcomes such as heart attacks or mortality. But a couple of blood pressure points are better than nothing, right?
- All other claims … a . There is no consensus on good quality evidence to support the idea that chocolate can help you lose weight, improve athletic performance, beat depression, or achieve other highly publicized benefits. Yes, there are some studies that are promising for this or that ailment. People who skim this post will share them in the comments as a kind of unfounded rebuttal. (Come on, prove I’m wrong!) Is it possible that future research will support these preliminary findings? Maybe. Check back later for more research.
To further discourage you, I have to point out something sad about many of these studies: they don’t always include real chocolate.
One physician who oversaw the cocoa antioxidant memory test told CBC News in his own excellent chocolate myth-busting episode :
“[The high flavonol substance used in our study] is not chocolate. It is derived from cocoa beans, so I can understand the confusion. Chocolate itself may contain some of these cocoa flavonols, but in very small amounts. doctor. I’m a little worried about the headlines that say “Eat chocolate.” I am not suggesting this. “
In articles about the health benefits of chocolate, words such as “cocoa”, ” cocoa ” or “extract” are often used. These are clues that the test substance was not actually chocolate in the form of a bar, but a refined version that might not necessarily be available for purchase.
What type of chocolate should you eat for health benefits?
This is where most of the articles tell you not to eat a lot of chocolate because it is full of fat and sugar. I will skip this. It’s delicious, which is why I advise you to eat as much chocolate as you like. (Come on, I’ll wait.) You ate it because it was good, right? Not because you think it will make you super healthy.
Let’s say you want to reap the health benefits. Maybe you’re trying to lower your blood pressure by two points, or maybe you’re hedging your bets for the day they announce that chocolate is indeed the magic bullet for weight loss. Which chocolate is best?
Technically minimally processed cocoa powder contains the most antioxidants. But the recommendation to use cocoa powder instead of chocolate seems to ignore the fact that no one eats clean spoons of cocoa powder . If you turn it into, say, a muffin or a bowl of sweetened oatmeal, then we’re not comparing dark chocolate to cocoa powder, are we? We compare dark chocolate to chocolate flavored muffins and chocolate flavored oatmeal. One WebMD article on the health benefits of chocolate includes a chocolate raspberry cake recipe .
By the time cocoa turned into chocolate bars, it had lost most of its flavonol content (a family of antioxidants that research has often focused on). So, as the researcher described in the news program above, the amount of potentially beneficial chemicals in chocolate bars has been reduced to almost zero. However, some studies on blood pressure have shown real benefits to dark chocolate.
At least in the laboratory, the antioxidant content of chocolate correlates with the percentage of cocoa . In order to chocolate could be called a dark, FDA USA requires a minimum of 35% cocoa content. Fancy brands of chocolate often label their cocoa content. In my supermarket, I found Green & Black’s to be 70% cocoa (60% for flavor bars), Lindt 70% and 85%, and Ghirardelli’s midnight brooding 86%. Hershey’s Special Dark is only 45% cocoa .
Compared to milk chocolate, dark chocolate contains less sugar, more fat, and more fiber. Switching from Green & Black milk chocolate (already quite high at 34%) to its dark 70% will require 13 to 17 grams of fat and 19 to 11 grams of sugar.
Bottom line: is chocolate good for you?
It depends on why you are eating it. If you are concerned about your blood pressure and are doing your best to manage it with diet and exercise, but just want to add a little bit to that effort, of course, take a square a day and see if that helps.
If you’re trying to stay slim and vaguely healthy, or improve your memory, athletic performance, happiness, or skin health, chocolate isn’t going to help you.
If you use a health halo to justify a chocolate filling, the superfood label becomes more harmful than healthy.
But you know what? You don’t need anyone’s permission to enjoy chocolate (or anything for that matter). It’s okay to decide that you are going to eat chocolate because it is delicious and include it in your diet (or consider it a mistake and gracefully recover. ). You don’t have to pretend it’s great. Just eat.
Photos by Martin Cooper , Mike Mozart , Jim Bauer , US Navy , Clint Budd .
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