The Health Benefits of Dark Chocolate

Earlier this year, lisala wrote a story about the antioxidants found in dark chocolate, as well as the benefits of dark chocolate with red wine. (Talk about sheer decadence for your health! If you haven’t read that article, be sure to find out how much is too much of the delicious duo—and how much you can have in your diet.)

But did you know that dark chocolate is loaded with other health benefits? A small dark chocolate bar every day can actually help your heart, as well as your cardiovascular system. Here are some great ways that dark chocolate can improve your life—aside from tantalizing your taste buds:

Dark chocolate can reduce bad cholesterol by up to 10%.

One study has shown that dark chocolate may prevent fatty substances from clogging the bloodstream, protecting your arteries from becoming clogged as well.

All types of chocolate stimulate production of endorphins as well as serotonin, which creates a happy feeling—lowering stress and helping you to relax, as well as reducing pain.

If you are okay with ingesting caffeine, dark chocolate can also give you an energy boost from that. (However, not as much as a cup of coffee will.)

If you have high blood pressure, listen up: dark chocolate has been found to help lower blood pressure.

And one thing to keep in mind is that while yes, chocolate does contain fat, only a third of it is an unhealthy saturated fat.  In fact, one third of the fat found in dark chocolate is the same kind of healthy fat found in olive oil.

None of this means that it’s OK to gorge on chocolate every day! It still has a lot of calories; in fact, one regular bar has 400 calories—the amount in a full meal for many people. To get the benefits, you do, however, need about 3.5 ounces of chocolate; so it’s your choice if you’d like to sacrifice other, perhaps more filling snacks, for some dark chocolate and its benefits.

And while milk chocolate does have some antioxidant benefits, it doesn’t have the benefits of dark chocolate listed above; to get these benefits, you’ll have to go for the dark variety. This is because dark chocolate has a cocoa content of 65% or higher, rather than being made up of other unhealthy additives.

Also, chocolate syrups and cocoa powders are usually processed so much that their antioxidants and benefits are typically removed. So go for that raw, rich dark chocolate!