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

Written by Mike Roussell · Filed Under Blog

Comments

417Comments2007-12-05+18%3A07%3A29Mike+Roussell to “Healthy Chocolate - Myth or Reality??”

Antioxidant activity and Food scoring systems « Bradley Simpson on December 5th, 2007 7:56 pm

[...] activity and Food scoring systems Great article discussing the antioxidant activity of chocolate, and even touching on a food scoring [...]
Kim on December 7th, 2007 2:59 pm

The CACAO bean from which chocolate is made is being overlooked in your comparison. Cacao in its raw unprocessed state is loaded with nutrients that are very beneficial. I don’t see anything else on your ORAC list that has been processed so if chocolate can still retain its antioxident value it must be some really good stuff. You still have alot to learn.
Mike Roussell on December 7th, 2007 3:51 pm

I’m not arguing that Cacao bean don’t have beneficial health properties. The problem is that people (Americans at least) don’t eat Cacao alone. They eat chocolate/cacao candy (disguised as a health food).

I’m not saying the process of making chocolate ruins the antioxidant properties found in Cacao.

The point I was trying to make is that we need to look at the foods we eat as a whole and recognize that yes these “healthy” chocolate products do have a high ORAC but they also have a good dose of sugar and saturated fat. These things shouldn’t be overlooked by the consumer just because they are overlooked by the marketing people.

“You still have a lot to learn” - You bet!
Bob DeCarlo on December 7th, 2007 8:14 pm

Good article Mike
It is a good wake-up for most people vs. what is advertised. Below is certified organic made of 100% cocao if you want to consume reasonably healthy chocolate. But even this has 11g of fat and 5g of Sat. Fat per oz.

Certified organic
Dagoba Cacao Nibs - 6 oz
Lightly roasted and crushed organic Arriba cacao beans sourced from small-scale farmers in southern Ecuador.
Enjoy the signature of flavors of Arriba: tangerine, red berry with a dark chocolate finish and a slight lavender floral bouquet.
The heart of cacao and the taste of chocolate as nature intended.
Mike Roussell on December 7th, 2007 8:59 pm

Bob,

Thanks. You definitely got the point that I was trying to make. Question the advertising and look at the food as a whole. I’m not anti fat or saturated fat. But I am against using science to one aspect of a food stand out but at the same time ignoring the science that may take away from the “benefits” of a given product.

-Mike
Jeff on December 10th, 2007 3:42 pm

So what is the bottom line here. I understand your point about being an educated consumer, but is a small dose of dark chocolate daily a good choice? I purchase a bar (about 3″ X 7″) that has a 85% Cacao rating. It can be broken into 10 smaller blocks (about 1″ X 1″). A serving size is 4 blocks. I have ONLY one of these smaller blocks in the evening after supper for a chocolate “fix”. It probably weighs about 8-10 grams. The equivilent of about 2 Hersey kisses. I am not over weight, so I felt that this was a balanced consumption.
The Fitness Journal » The Truth About Chocolate on December 12th, 2007 12:58 pm

[...] unfortunately it isn’t good news. As always Mike has written an informative and entertaining post that you should really check [...]
Mike Roussell on December 12th, 2007 2:13 pm

Jeff,

That’s what you want to do. That’s actually exactly what we do in our house. My wife likes to sometimes have a little chocolate after dinner. So we buy the darkest chocolate we can find, break it up into small pieces, and have a small piece after dinner to fullfill that chocolate fix.

-Mike
Patrick on December 12th, 2007 5:27 pm

I understand your point about looking at foods as a whole and not focusing in on one benefit while ignoring all the “bad” stuff. My problem is that you are using the %DV values listed. From the picture, 20g of carbs is listed as 7% of our DV. Do you really think that we should be eating 286g of carbs and limiting ourselves to only 2000 calories? I would think that the 14g of sugar is more of a concern than the 8g of saturated fat.
Steve on January 11th, 2008 1:24 am

Mike,
Good point! Sadly we get sucked into these “news” articles (IE advertising campaigns!) and do tend to forget the bigger, logical picture.
Mike Geary on January 20th, 2008 4:23 am

There are some good points here in both directions. My opinion — milk chocolate and dark chocolate 70-75% cocoa content has very little sugar and typically 3-6 gms of fiber per serving. Still calorically dense, but a healthy treat in moderation. And no, the fats are NOT bad for you…

One point I’d like to make is that most people seem to be falsely assuming here that saturated fat is evil. Although almost every media outlet and health professional in the world has been taught that this is true… there are actually no “facts” that prove this to be. I’ve studied this topic for over 5 yrs. Here are 2 articles that are must reads for anybody that wants to truly understand the biochemistry of fats and how they react in the body. These are long but are both exceptional reads:

http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=health&category=heart.disease&conitem=a03ddd2eaab85110VgnVCM10000013281eac____

http://www.truthaboutabs.com/truth-about-saturated-fat.html

-Mike
Mike Geary on January 20th, 2008 4:29 am

Ok, for some reason, several sentences were deleted somehow in my last post. This was the real sentence about milk vs dark choco…

My point — milk chocolate and dark chocolate 70-75% cocoa content has very little sugar and typically 3-6 gms of fiber per serving. Still calorically dense, but a healthy treat in moderation.

Also, that menshealth link looks too long. here’s a shortened version…

http://tinyurl.com/yubfny
Mike Geary on January 20th, 2008 4:40 am

Ok, I give up… for some reason it cut out my sentence again. Ignore the “milk chocolate” phrase as that was part of a sentence that got cut out.

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