Healthy chocolate – What you should look for when choosing it?
I don't know anyone who doesn't like chocolate. Do you know someone?
Chocolate is somehow a difficult topic when it comes to health and weight loss.
When thinking of chocolate, many immediately think: too many calories and far too much sugar.
Most people think you can't eat chocolate anymore if you want to eat healthy, so they cut it out of their diet completely.
Unfortunately, this often results in craving attacks and you give up and slip back into fundamentally unhealthy eating behaviors. At least that's how I felt myself when I first started looking at healthy diet to occupy. Because I was an absolute chocolate junkie. And still am today – only today I pay more attention to what chocolate I eat.
Did you know that Cocoa is one of the healthiest foods on the planet! So you can continue to eat chocolate. Perfectly healthy living.
Just try to use cocoa in a different way than the food industry does. Because, yes, the bars of milk chocolate from the supermarket are indeed not healthy. They usually contain far too much Sugar, additives and partly also others Chemicals. This of course has nothing to do with healthy chocolate.
There are so many great recipes to eat cacao in a healthy way too. Meanwhile, you can also buy healthy chocolate in the supermarket. And you can even lose weight with the right chocolate. Class, or?
But first, let's talk about what you can do to eat healthy chocolate. So what chocolate can you eat and how much? Which chocolate should you rather avoid?
Difference between cocoa and chocolate
At the beginning it is of course good if you know what the difference between cocoa and chocolate is. To make sure that we are always talking about the same thing, I will first explain the terminology.
Cocoa
Cocoa is an umbrella term and, depending on the context, is either the plant (cocoa tree), its seeds (cocoa bean) or products made from it.
The evergreen tree is the origin of our delicious chocolate. The cacao tree is mainly grown for its fruits. In the fruits are the seeds, also called cocoa beans.
#fun fact: In former times cocoa beans were even a means of payment. So people knew very early on that cocoa was incredibly valuable.
Cocoa products
cocoa powder
A cocoa mass is extracted from the cocoa beans. If you remove most of the fat from this cocoa mass by roasting, peeling and grinding the cocoa beans, you get cocoa powder. You might know this cacao powder from the supermarket as raw baking cacao.
Cacao butter
cocoa butter is the fat extracted from the cocoa mass of the beans. It looks like white chocolate. Also available in well-stocked supermarkets.
Chocolate
The chocolate is a solid processed food product. So the sweets we all know well. In most cases the chocolate in the supermarket contains a lot of sugar – depending on the cocoa content more or less. The darker the chocolate, the less sugar it contains.
What are the benefits of cocoa?
As already mentioned, cocoa is one of the healthiest food on our planet and there are now also numerous studies on this.
The cocoa bean is nowadays processed with Many health benefits associated. What science has found out so far, I'll list for you here:
– Cocoa supports a healthy intestinal flora. – Cocoa works Anti-inflammatory. – Cocoa improves Insulin sensitivity and thus helps diabetics. – Cocoa improves Liver functions. – Cocoa helps with Lose weight. – Cocoa reduced Stress hormones. – Cocoa improves the physical Endurance. – Cocoa even reduces the risk of Alzheimer to get sick. – Cacao slows down the Aging process. – Cocoa works anti-cancer. – Cocoa reduces the risk of Cardiovascular diseases, because it increases the elasticity of the blood vessels. – Cacao works anticoagulant.
So I find this list very impressive. And you?
Responsible for these many positive effects are the valuable secondary plant compounds of the cacao bean. Especially the Polyphenols Epicatechin, resveratrol and flavanol are important and meanwhile well researched antioxidants.
Also valuable minerals are contained in chocolate. Including magnesium, iron, potassium, calcium, zinc, copper and manganese.
What should you look for in chocolate?
I guess you know.. The darker the chocolate, the healthier.
And that's because in dark chocolate the cocoa content is higher and the sugar content is lower. The less the cocoa had to be processed, the more healthy nutrients it contains.
Ideally you eat the cacao raw. Which admittedly does not really taste. It also has little in common with the whole milk chocolate from the supermarket. But there are many easy ways and delicious recipes with raw cacao that have a delicious "chocolaty" taste.
Because I think that sweetness (as healthy as it can be) must be here in any case. Cacao tastes only unfortunately in raw form rather something bitter, what at the Flavanols lies. But they are just so healthy for us.
Try to find a healthy chocolate that is as little processed as possible and still tastes good to you. Best would be a chocolate with a Cacao content of at least 70%. White chocolate or milk chocolate are unfortunately rather a bad choice. Even if exactly these varieties are probably the most supposedly delicious.
But I can tell you from my own experience that your fundamentally change taste becomes Diet sugar free gestaltest. Milk chocolate. Meanwhile, the well-known supermarket chocolates are much too sweet for me. Also don't taste as good to me as they used to. Meanwhile, the well-known supermarket chocolates are far too sweet for me. Don't taste as good to me as before either. So everything a question of habituation. And we've (unfortunately) almost all been programmed from an early age to eat the sugary foods…
It is also important that you avoid as much as possible Organic quality eighth. So you can additionally be sure that the cacao beans in your healthy chocolate are not genetically modified.
Which ingredients should you avoid in chocolate??
There are now so many different chocolates on the market. Since it is sometimes confusing, Which ingredients rather belong on the red list and which you can enjoy in moderation.
There are two ingredients you can pay special attention to – sugar and fat. Therefore, it is best to always look carefully at the list of ingredients.
So it is not only advisable to look for a healthy chocolate that has a low sugar content, but it is also important what form of sugar it contains.
There are chocolates that are made with honey or stevia sweetened, which is better than cane sugar, fructose or corn syrup. But I definitely avoid chocolate, for example, which is Artificial sweeteners contain. That's because researchers are increasingly confirming that artificial sweeteners are damaging our Permanently change and damage intestinal flora.
In addition, every chocolate always contains fat. Fat is not bad per se, because it slows down the absorption of the sugar and thus reduces the insulin output.
But you should avoid The right kind of fat watch out.
Best of all, the fat in the cocoa bean itself – i.e. the Cocoa butter. But coconut oil is also a good alternative. experiments to avoid, that you take chocolate with Trans fats (industrially hydrogenated fats), because they increase bad cholesterol and cause deposits on the vascular wall.