Is it really true? Eating chocolate prevents heart disease?
It seems more and more of our friends and family are dealing with heart disease. At the minimum, they have been forced to follow restrictive heart healthy diets and to make dietary changes as recommended by their physician. When I recently saw an article from the Harvard Health blog encouraging eating chocolate, I was all over it. If I can help my friends and family improve their heart health with chocolate, that sounds great to me. Most of you know I am a bit obsessed over dark healthy chocolate.
This article from Harvard detailed a Norfolk, England study that followed chocolate eaters for 11 years. The results confirmed that the top tier eaters of chocolate had less cardiovascular disease or death than those who did not eat chocolate. I say bring on the chocolate!
The article does point out an important fact however,
“The amount of cocoa used in chocolate varies a lot. To find out how much you’re getting you’ll have to do some detective work. The amount of flavonoids in chocolate is not always listed. “
Doing my own research and detective work, I was able to find only one company that is listing the cocoa flavonoid content on their chocolate products. That company is Well Beyond.
They make two varieties of Beyond healthy chocolate including Xobiotic squares with probiotics for gut health and Power squares with super dark chocolate. Each one of their 6 gram individually wrapped chocolates is equal in antioxidants to over 1 pound of raw spinach. The cocoa flavonoid content is listed on each piece and is off the charts. I have listed them below.
Beyond Xobiotic: 576 mg flavonoids per piece
Beyond X Power Squares: 672 mg flavonoids per piece
Not only have I tasted these chocolates, they are so delicious that I have been eating them for over 8 years. Check out these healthy belgian chocolates and be sure to follow their advice. They recommend eating at least 4 a day spaced out morning, mid day, afternoon and evening to receive the best benefit. Apparently antioxidants only stay in your body for 4-6 hours and need to regularly be replenished.
Contact Well Beyond Chocolates at HealthyChocolateFix.com or at (941) 268-1354.
