Healthy Chocolate - Myth or Reality??
December 5, 2007
If it is good for you then you should eat it - right?
This is how many people think. That is why food companies work so hard to convince you that their products are good for you. Now I have no problem with them doing this as long as the product is really good for you. The dairy people are relentless marketers about the benefits of dairy. Yeah they went a little awry with the whole “lose weight, drink milk” stuff. But for the most part they are honest about the good (protein, calcium, etc) and bad (fat, saturated fat) about dairy and do their best to make products that emphasize the good and minimize the bad (low fat dairy or my favorite low carb/low fat dairy - I love calorie countdown chocolate milk).
Other groups are not so moral (ohhh…moral. That’s a strong word. I can only imagine the emails I will get after the rest of this entry). Today I’m talking about chocolate. There is a ton of hoopla about healthy chocolate. Everyone wants to know about the health benefits of chocolate.
“Did you hear that chocolate is healthy!?”
“I know I can’t wait to have a whole case of oreos!”
Let’s get real here. Green Tea is healthy. Green Tea Ice Cream…not so much. The same goes for chocolate. Coco is loaded with antioxidants and has a long list of potential health benefits.
But we don’t like coco.
We like candy.
What is being done all over the chocolate industry is that companies are using science to highlight one aspect of their product that has potential health benefits and they forget to mention the other aspect of the same product that could be bad for your health.
Exhibit A - Hershey’s Extra Dark: Pure Dark Chocolate

Look at the antioxidant comparison. Dark chocolate has more ORAC (basically antioxidant activity) than blueberries, raspberries, grapes…This is amazing (read with sarcasm).
“If blueberries are good because of their antioxidants then dark chocolate must be even better?“. Right?
Ummm….Let’s look a little deeper.
Exhibit B: Nutrition Facts
When we look at the nutritional information we find that the one serving of dark chocolate that gave us all that ORAC also gives us 8 grams of Saturated Fat. That’s 40% of your daily intake. So where is the health benefit?
Think about it Good (high ORAC) vs Bad (high saturated fat). How do the health benefits net out? I would score it like this
ORAC = +5
8g Saturated Fat = -20
Overall Health Benefit = -15
Doesn’t seem so healthy after all does it? Coco may provide health benefits. But chances are if you are getting your coco via commercial chocolate products then those health benefits do not exceed the negative health impact from other components of the product.
Be a smart shopper. Don’t get sucked into the marketing hype surrounding food.
Have a good one,
-Mike


















