Choosing Chocolate as Your Dietary Antidote for Stress

When you are under stress, do you crave certain foods? While emotional eating is not a good way to combat stress, and usually isn’t good for your health either (unless you are craving kale on stressful days), one body of research suggests dark chocolate could be a great stress-antidote.

According to a study, published in the Journal of Proteome Research, individuals who are highly stressed benefit from daily consumption of dark chocolate. >

Could Chocolate Actually Make You Look Younger?

There was a time when teenagers were cautioned against eating too much chocolate because it would cause acne breakouts. While the sugar, and not the chocolate was likely the culprit if any of these chocolate-induced breakouts were real, there is research now that shows chocolate can actually benefit the skin - particularly when it’s dark chocolate.

First, it’s worth noting that most chocolate is milk chocolate (if it’s even chocolate at all). The chocolate candy bars you’ll find in most stores are highly processed, containing added sugar and potentially many other questionable ingredients. Needless to say, this kind of chocolate is not very beneficial. When searching for chocolate, always go for the dark chocolate with a high cocoa content. You may see candy bars that list “70% cocoa” or more, with the higher concentrations being lower in sugar and subsequently better for you. >

Chocolate Shown to Enhance Visual Performance, Improve Eyesight

Everyone knows that carrots are good for promoting healthy vision; it’s the beta-carotene contained in carrots that makes the vegetable a powerful food for eye health. But recent research has found that a much sweeter, favorite snack can also be responsible for eye health – chocolate.

Finding yet another health benefits of chocolate, scientists with the University of Reading in England tested the vision of 30 men and women before and a few hours after eating a chocolate bar. (Doesn’t sound so bad , huh?) Half of the participants received white chocolate and the other half received dark chocolate. Those who received dark chocolate performed better on vision tests—better than before the tests and better than the other participants who received white chocolate. Their findings were published in Physiology and Behavior. >