Sometimes, the health advice out there can be a little confusing. Things that are touted as great for your health one day are supposedly bad for you the next. One day margarine is good for your heart. Then, it turns out it has hydrogenated oils that are terrible for your heart. One day, you hear everyone tell you to drink eight glasses of water in a day. Then, you hear them say that there isn’t any evidence that any of that is necessary.
One of the major victims of this bipolar thinking is chocolate, which is an unfair victim. Because of how it has been misunderstood in the past, it was thought that chocolate has nothing but saturated fats, which aren’t good for your heart. However, new information has come to show that the fat in chocolate is good for your heart.
Here are some facts about chocolate from chuaochocolatier.com that show why chocolate is better for you than you might think.
The Goodies in Chocolate
Chocolate and most of its ingredients come from the cacao bean, which is perfectly natural. The specific source of the fats in chocolate is cocoa butter, which comes from the cacao bean. A third of the fat is stearic acid, which is converted into oleic acid in the liver. Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fat and is, therefore, healthy for the heart. Another third is pure oleic acid, which we have already established is healthy for the heart. The final third is palmitic acid, which used to be thought of as a saturated fat, although that remains under scrutiny.
The whole point here is that most of the fat in chocolate raises the good cholesterol in your body and lowers the bad cholesterol. Under normal medical circumstances, you would have to swallow some pills to achieve that. However, nature is giving us a pill that tastes much better than the ones we get from pharmaceuticals. Better yet, this particular pill even goes well with wine.
Research Highlights Chocolate’s Health Benefits
You’re probably wondering at this point whether there has been any research on the matter. Has anyone performed a study on a significant sample of people to determine whether taking more chocolate reduces the risk of heart disease? As it turns out, they have. It was, indeed, found that more chocolate led to less heart disease. The study also found that the risk was lowered even further if the chocolate was taken consistently.
If you eat or drink chocolate between once and three times per week, that is considered a good amount. It got better if you stepped it up to four times a week. However, the best results came from those who took chocolate more than five times a week, which is eating chocolate every day. The more consistently you enjoy a bit of chocolate, the lower your risk of heart disease.
While doctors aren’t yet prescribing a daily dose of chocolate, the jury has pretty much unofficially arrived, and you now know what’s good for you. It’s not every day that the healthier choice is so delicious, so seize the opportunity any way you can.
About Jammie Morey
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