Organic RAW DARK CHOCOLATE HEALTH BENEFITS

June 01, 2015

Raw Dark chocolate is so misunderstood.

Is it good or is it bad for you?

Well, it has certainly maintained its reputation of being fattening yet delicious with some sense of gallantry.

But isn’t chocolate a superfood?  Yes, it is, so what gives?  Good or bad?

Well it’s simple, pure dark chocolate, especially when raw and unprocessed, is good for you.  Very good!  But it’s everything else that most manufacturers add to the chocolate is what’s bad.

The biggest offending added ingredient is sugar off course.

That is what makes chocolate fattening.  Chocolate often contains various other chemicals and ingredients intended to make it pretty and lower its cost of manufacturing; ingredients such as emulsifiers, wax, vegetable oil, and more baddies.

Note I earlier used the qualifying adjective Dark, i.e., without dairy.  Dairy has been shown to neutralize many of the superfood qualities found in cacao, actually the flavonoids.

But let’s stick with pure dark chocolate (no milk chocolate or white chocolate), the superfood, the kind we use at Hnina.

Ok, chocolate is not without calories, and could be fattening if over eating.

But so do avocados, almonds, sweet potatoes and most extremely nourishing foods.

So let’s define chocolate calories as good beneficial calories, whereas refined sugar and rancid vegetable oil are bad calories and dangerous for you.

Raw Dark Chocolate contains over 600 natural compounds and elements including flavanoids, magnesium, and theobromine.

Flavanoids (including flavanols, flavones, flavanones, and others) are potent antioxidants capable of inducing nitric oxide-dependent vasodilation (widening of the arteries), as well as having antiplatelet and anti-inflammatory effects.

All this means it’s good for your heart and vascular system.  Cacao is actually the most complex food in the world.

With more than 1,200 constituents, it contains a far greater amount of antioxidants than all of the world’s leading antioxidant-rich foods.

Raw cacao is so powerful that it actually contains 15 times more antioxidants than blueberries, 30 times more than red wine, and 20 times more than green tea.

Here are just a few of raw dark chocolate’s health benefits.

1. Chocolate can efficiently help reduce blood pressure.
2. Dark chocolate helps boost good cholesterol. Flavonoids inhibit LDL oxidation and reduce thrombotic tendency.
3. Foods rich in flavonoids are being heralded as potential preventive agents for a range of pathologic conditions, ranging from hypertension to coronary heart disease to stroke and dementia.
4. Epicatechin, a component of cocoa improves various aspects of cognition. In addition, flavonoids preserve cognitive abilities during aging, lowering the risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease.
5. Even with its calories, the cocoa contained in chocolate may reduce body weight (no, that’s not going to work with sugary chocolate).

6. Bacteria forming the gut flora break down raw dark chocolate components into molecules that reduce stress on the blood vessels. Actually, Bifidobacterium and lactic acid bacteria, love chocolate. When you eat dark chocolate, they grow, ferment it, and produce compounds that are anti-inflammatory. Our gut microbes may be the most important component that drives our mood by regulating the production in serotonine in the intestines and blood.

7. Consuming higher amounts of foods rich in flavonoids can help prevent diabetes.
8. Flavanols in dark chocolate can help prevent wrinkles and skin cancer caused by sunlight.
9. Dark chocolate consumption during pregnancy reduces likelihood of Preeclampsia.
10. Eating very dark high quality chocolate during pregnancy makes for happier and livelier babies as dark chocolate can be passed from mothers to babies in the womb.
11. Epicatechin, which is commonly found in dark chocolate, can significantly enhance leg strength and endurance as well as provide benefits at a mitochondrial or cellular level. Chocolate can therefore also have a much shorter term benefit when it comes to athletic performance.



So good or bad?  You now understand.

Eat it pure, raw and dark chocolate and it’s excellent.  Otherwise, not so good to very bad.

This is why at Hnina we looked for such a long time to find a delicious unprocessed raw chocolate.

The goal was a wonderful taste and experience first, but also 100% guilt free and loaded with powerful nutrients.

We achieved that and it makes us very happy.

We love what we do and the fact that such good food is also so nutritious and good for us.

A votre santé!

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