Is chocolate good for you?

When it comes to nutrition (selecting what you eat), there are so many contradictory recommendations, it’s hard to keep track.

That’s one of the reasons I generally recommend that you should ignore the “experts.” There have just been too many times where some research study recommends doing one thing and several years later a new study finds that doing that thing causes more harm than good.

The most dramatic example of this is with trans-fats which I’ve discussed in previous blogs. For 30 or 40 years the “experts” told us that margarine was better for our health than butter. Now, new studies are demonstrating just the opposite. In fact, it turns out that trans-fat (which is the primary fat in margarine) is so dangerous it has been completely banned in some countries and other countries/cities are considering such a ban.

So, for how long have we been told that chocolate is a “bad” food. It’s loaded with saturated fat and sugar so how could it be categorized any other way?

Well, it turns out that chocolate could actually be good for you. In fact, based on data from recent research, some folks are now recommending you eat some dark chocolate every day.

The research shows that dark chocolate helps thin the blood (causes the blood to take longer to clot) which may help prevent heart attacks and stroke.

Are these experts right? Or, are we going to find out in ten years that chocolate may help thin your blood but it also causes brain cancer if you eat it every day?

Here’s the key. You must ignore the results of these isolated studies and just pay attention to what your body is telling you and some basic nutrition principles. I go into detail on these two topics in my course.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness