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Why is Chocolate Healthy?, Part 1 Print E-mail


Chocolate really is good for you. Before you say, "Yeah, right," remember that "Yeah, right" is what we said when they first told us red wine was good for us. "Yeah, right" is what we said when they told us olive oil was good for us. We still carry old assumptionsperhaps from many decades of mushy vegetables in the United States, or from well-meaning mothersthat has us convinced of a split in the food world: there are foods that are good for us, and foods that taste good, and rarely do the two sides mix. Broccoli, spinach, whole-wheat bread: good for us, taste bad. Wine, nuts, chocolate: bad for us, taste good.

Thankfully, just as we are learning how delicious broccoli and spinach can be, just as we now take it for granted that moderate wine drinking is good for our hearts, we will soon see it as self-evident that chocolate is good for us. But that time is still a bit off, so we'd better go through the evidence anyway.

Members of the jury, I now call antioxidants to the stand.

What Are Antioxidants?

Although everyone has heard of antioxidants, most people have only a hazy conception of what they are. These compounds, found in fruits and vegetables, help prevent scores of diseaseseverything from heart disease and cancer to stroke, Alzheimer's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, cataracts, and the general effects of aging. Antioxidants are what make carrots orange and tomatoes red. Some antioxidants have been well known for years, such as vitamin C and vitamin E; others have been recognized only recently.

Among the most noteworthy antioxidants are polyphenols, the compounds in red wine and green tea that are so good for our blood vessels. You don't need a lab to confirm the presence of polyphenols in red wine and tea; just use your tongue. That astringency and hint of bitterness comes from the polyphenols. Can you think of any other foods that produce astringency and bitterness on the tongue? That's right: chocolate.

If bitterness is not the first word that comes to mind when you think of chocolate, think instead of cocoa powder or baking chocolate. That bitterness is the key, because it marks the sign of certain concentrated polyphenol antioxidants. And I mean concentrated: a bar of dark chocolate has twice the antioxidant content of a glass of red wine and seven times that of green tea. What about fruits and vegetables? They don't even come close. Oranges have 750 antioxidant units per 100 grams, kale 1,770. Blueberries, poster-children of the antioxidant world, have 2,400. And dark chocolate? More than 13,000.

"Chocolate just stands out," says Joe Vinson of the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania. "It's much higher than anything else." Other studies have shown that one good-quality dark chocolate bar can have more polyphenols than two whole days' worth of fruits and vegetables. If it seems amazing that a confection could blow away all these healthy fruits and vegetables, remind yourself that chocolate is made from the seeds of a fruit. Easten in fairly pure form, chocolate fits perfectly into a healthy, all-natural diet.


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