Chocolate Can be Sweet to Your Heart
Joan Salge Blake, MS, RD, LDN
Clinical Assistant Professor
Boston University
The Facts:
Antioxidant-rich phytochemicals found in fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and chocolate can be healthy for your heart by lowering your risk of heart disease.
These phytochemicals can intercept or neutralize damaging free radicals, which are unstable molecules that are generated during many normal reactions in the body, before these free radicals can damage cells and tissues. For example, the LDL “bad” cholesterol when oxidized by free radicals in the body, leads to the hardening of the arteries and heart disease.
The Take Home Message:
- Dark chocolate, fruits such as strawberries, apples, citrus fruits, cherries, and vegetables such as broccoli, tomatoes, and onions, are rich in these phytochemicals. Dark chocolate has four times more of these phytochemicals than milk chocolate.
- This doesn’t make chocolate a food group. While a half ounce, 3 Dark Chocolate Hershey Kisses, provides a mere 60 calories, a handful can provide three times as much and become a calorie-laden mini meal. Think small when it comes to satisfying that urge for chocolate, skip the two-pound bars and buy only minibar sizes (half ounce or less) to help you keep a lid on the calories.
- Get two for the price of one by serving phytochemical-rich fresh fruit dipped in a dap of melted dark chocolate instead of a slice Death By Chocolate for dessert. The fiber-rich fruit will fill you up and help keep the chocolate to a sweet minimum for a lower calorie dessert alternative.
- Count on Cocoa. This is probably the best kept secret. Cocoa powder has most of the fatty cocoa butter removed so a tablespoon of cocoa can have as little as 20 calories and little fat. Use cocoa instead of milk chocolate or baking chocolate in your cooking to help satisfy that chocolate flavor you want.
Here’s a link to Joan Salge Blake’s Heavenly Angel Cake covered in strawberries with a drizzle of chocolate.