The Truth About Chocolate

Chocolate gets a bad wrap these days; it makes you fat, gives you spots and is a replacement boyfriend for women that just can’t hold a real one down.  Sooner or later I expect they’ll even link it to cancer; most other things have been.  In fact, in these times of health obsession and heart disease, it is hard to justify buying and eating chocolate at any time other than Easter – because it’s so bad for you!  Or...is it?

It should be no surprise that chocolate has been the subject matter for huge amounts of university studies; everybody is looking for that elusive “chocolate gives you cancer/makes you impotent/leads to miscarriages story that will give their little study some much-needed popularity.  The findings of these studies, however, may come as quite a shock to most you – especially to you people who find yourselves fleeing to confession at the mere sight of the free piece of personalised chocolate provided with your coffee.

Firstly and most importantly; there is absolutely no causal link whatsoever between consuming chocolate and getting acne – so there!  Instead, it could well be that people with acne feel the need to eat more chocolate to cheer themselves up, because the elevated mood associated with chocolate is a genuine side effect.  Chocolate contains phenyl ethylamine – a mood elevator which, when combined with a rise in serotonin levels due to the massive intake of carbohydrate, results in a temporary sense of happiness and well-being.  However, the chocolate “high” and excitability associated with chocolate are also myths; the quantities of caffeine and bromine in chocolate are so low that they have little or no effect on the human body, unless you consume somewhere in the region of 10kg of the stuff – at which point I expect the subsequent gym binge will ruin your mood.

The source of chocolate is the cacao bean, which actually tastes rather foul.  I discovered in Africa that the pod in which the cacao beans grow contains a delicious flesh, but the actual beans themselves are disgusting - especially when dried out in the chocolate-making process.  

Interestingly however, these beans are actually home to antibacterial agents that fight tooth decay! Now there’s an ironic twist for you!  The horrible tasting source of chocolate is actually good for your teeth; it is the sugar that we pump into the chocolate that makes it bad for your teeth...but delicious.  On the up side, the flavanoids in chocolate (which ironically don’t affect the taste) can help lower bad cholesterol, while the stearic acid in chocolate does not raise bad cholesterol!  Whilst milk chocolate does contain lots of saturated fat and sugar, dark chocolate contains a whole lot less milk (surprise surprise) and more cacao; hence there are more health benefits and less health risks associated with dark chocolate.  

My favourite chocolate-related discovery, however, is the fact that chocolate is NOT addictive!  Despite raising your mood, chocolate contains no addictive chemicals or substances; the compulsion to eat the stuff is far more to do with social brainwashing than the food itself – is that a better or worse situation to be in?  Who knows!  What we can be sure of is that there is a whole lot less risk than one may be led to believe in having the occasional after dinner chocolate.