Do you smile when you remember how wonderful it was to eat chocolate in your childhood? Surely yes. Children are addicted to consuming it over and over again. Its rich and pleasant aroma and flavor make both children and adults love to eat it. There are many benefits of chocolate, although like almost all foods, it can be harmful depending on the amount and type you consume. Learn about all the benefits and disadvantages of eating chocolate below.
Types of chocolate
There are 3 types of chocolates that you can easily buy in any market or grocery store. These are white chocolate, milk chocolate, and lastly dark chocolate.
White chocolate
White chocolate contains cocoa butter, sugar, and milk and is the sweetest of the three types of chocolate . It has 20% cocoa butter, 14% milk, 3.5% milk fat, and approximately 55% sweeteners. It contains vanilla for flavor and lecithin, a fatty substance, which also works as an emulsifier. White chocolate is widely used to make delicious pastry dishes.
Milk chocolate
This type of chocolate has become the market leader for its rich flavor and aroma. It was first invented by Cadbury by mixing powdered milk, cocoa butter, and sugar . Milk chocolate has less sugar than white chocolate and has more cocoa. It is everyone’s favorite for its unique flavor and texture.
Dark chocolate
The quality of dark chocolate is quite nutritious: it includes a significant amount of soluble fiber, minerals, and 70% cocoa – created from cocoa beans ground with cocoa butter. It has less sugar compared to white chocolate and milk chocolate, so it contains fewer calories.
Chocolate benefits
Eating each of the types of chocolate provides different benefits to a greater or lesser extent since their nutritional values are different.
Benefits of eating white chocolate
The main ingredient in this product is milk, which contains calcium, which is why it helps to play a vital role in our body . A point in favor of this chocolate for intolerant people is that it does not contain caffeine, so it does not dehydrate the body.
Benefits of eating milk chocolate
Milk chocolate has enormous health benefits, including helping to keep your blood pressure balanced. Its consumption was studied by the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and they found that people who consumed white chocolate for more than 11.3 years had a lower risk of coronary heart disease and stroke.
Benefits of eating dark chocolate
Dark chocolate has great health benefits that surpass those of any other chocolate. Its basic ingredients are cocoa beans, sugar and soy lecithin to preserve the texture. These are its benefits:
- It is very nutritious due to the rich properties of cocoa , it also has a decent amount of soluble fiber and minerals. In the market we can find quality dark chocolate that includes fiber, iron, manganese, and other important nutrients.
- It is a powerful antioxidant food : this chocolate includes antioxidants such as polyphenols that help fight disease.
- Dark chocolate helps improve blood flow and lower blood pressure: Uncontrolled blood pressure can cause various health problems, therefore it is essential to keep an eye on it. In this case, eating chocolate can be a good option to control it.
- It contains three natural substances: Caffeine, Theobromine and Theophylline. All of these ingredients work together to reduce bronchospasms and unblock compressed bronchial tubes.
Harms of eating chocolate
As with many foods, consuming them provides benefits but can also negatively influence our body.
Disadvantages of eating white chocolate
This chocolate is the one that contains the most sugar of the three . Being highly sweetened, it has many extra calories that can be a threat to our body, especially for diabetics.
Disadvantages of eating milk chocolate
As we have mentioned, this chocolate includes a large amount of powdered, condensed or liquid milk that does not have as many quality nutrients as traditional milk. Therefore, consuming milk chocolate means taking added amounts of hydrogenated oils that can lead to strokes, heart disease, and diabetes.
Disadvantages of eating dark chocolate
Apart from its advantages, it also has some disadvantages. A dark chocolate bar – depending on the purity of the cocoa – can contain as much caffeine as 230 ml of coffee and, as we all know, caffeine causes dehydration that affects our digestion system. It can also increase the risk of kidney stones , as dark chocolate contains oxalates. So if you don’t want to suffer from these types of health problems, the best thing you can do is control your consumption of dark chocolate.
