Chocolate as a medicine

The thesis of this blog is the following: “Chocolate is not only a food for pleasure, filled with sugar but rather a food which has a good number of health benefits.” There are a few questions that chocolate lovers should ask when the discussion of chocolate comes up. The first question is “what are the nutritional benefits to the health of a human being with regard to the consumption of chocolate?” The second question is “Can regular consumption of chocolate be detrimental to the health of human beings?” Answering the first question of this blog could be summarized by saying that yes indeed there are many health benefits of regular consumption of chocolate, but that is of course to go with saying that dark chocolate is much healthier than milk chocolate in most cases.  

The reason as to why is that milk chocolate is mixed in with sugar, and while sugar is not always bad for us humans, and in some cases good for us, too much consumption of sugar is detrimental to our health, this is especially the case for people who are diabetic, which is why dark chocolate is a much better option for them. At the same time, however, chocolate does contain some vitamins and minerals which are healthy for human beings, these include but are not limited to zinc, iron, magnesium, iron, flavanols, polyphenols, and theobromine. The polyphenols and theobromine may also lower the levels of the LDL cholesterol in humans, this is good because while human beings do indeed need some levels of LDL cholesterol in order to remain alive and healthy, every scientific study has shown that an excess of LDL cholesterol can clog arteries, and lead to having a heart attack. These compounds found in dark chocolate not only can lower the LDL cholesterol but increase the HDL cholesterol. This is according to a randomized controlled study done in 2017 which was published in “The Journal of the American Heart Association.”  

In one other study which was a small study done in the year of 2018, the researchers had found that when a person ate 30 grams of chocolate that was 84 percent dark chocolate daily for about two months (eight weeks to be exact) that their inflammation had been reduced, this was done with two people who were type 2 diabetics. To answer the second question of this blog, it is simple to say that consuming dark chocolate does not seem to have any negative effects on human health, the only real way for chocolate to harm the health of a person is for them to overconsume it, the dosage equals the poison. The only other way that dark chocolate could be a detriment to human health is mainly through them having a certain condition that makes them weaker in their consumption of it. One example could be if a person has bad teeth health, the sugar which exists in the dark chocolate (believe it or not it actually does have some), would be a detriment to their teeth health, due to the fact that it contributes to teeth decay. The other example of dark chocolate being a detriment to the health of people with certain conditions could be if the person who is a type 2 diabetic, is so severely insulin sensitive, that they would have to go on a low carb and low sugar diet, but again the thing to remember is that these are either extremely rare, or are for a very short amount of time, dark chocolate consumption is not a poisonous food, and as stated before it has many different health benefits, some of which could be life-saving (think of the study that was mentioned here about LDL cholesterol). In conclusion, what readers of this blog should take away for themselves to know about, is that dark chocolate consumption is a great thing for most human beings to partake in, and while there are not many health risks aside from a small minority certain example, those examples can be used for any other things that human beings consume within the wrong dosage, even water can be poisonous if consumed in large amounts, but no consumption of water leads to dehydration and eventually to death. One other thing that readers of this blog should take away is that even if they choose to consume other types of chocolate, which are the ones that differ from the dark ones such as milk chocolate containing sugar, in small amounts those vitamins, minerals, and other beneficial compounds will still exist, and the appropriate amount of sugar is not harmful to the health of human beings, in most cases, the dosage will equal the poison. 

Bibliography

https://chocolatephayanak.com/unkategorisiert/history-of-chocolate-as-medicine/