Chocolate can help you lose weight and keep diabetes at bay. Chocolate contains special antioxidants. According to a scientific study from the USA, these antioxidants can help fight obesity and type 2 diabetes and prevent both problems. However, chocolate also provides numerous other valuable substances with an excellent effect on health.
Preventing weight gain with chocolate
It sounds too good to be true: U.S. researchers have good reason to believe that eating chocolate prevents obesity and diabetes.
Chocolate owes this effect to its main ingredient, cocoa. Cocoa is rich in antioxidants.
A study by the U.S. Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition™ even found that cocoa contains more antioxidants than most other fruits.
The researchers compared the antioxidant content of cocoa powder with that of other fruit powders. It was found that cocoa has by far the greatest antioxidant effect and contains the most valuable substances of all the plants examined.
Above all, the content of flavanols and polyphenols, special types of antioxidants, is enormous in cocoa.
Chocolate inhibits weight gain
According to the US research team led by Andrew P. Neilson, it is also the flavanols that are responsible for the effect against obesity and diabetes.
The scientists tested the influence of different flavanols from cocoa beans on mice that were fed high-fat food. The control group consisted of mice that were fed a low-fat diet.
According to the study, all antioxidants from cocoa prevented weight gain. However, oligomeric procyanidins were by far the most effective.
However, the oligomeric PCs also improved the glucose tolerance of the mice and thus made an important contribution to type 2 diabetes prevention.
Which chocolate is the right one?
The Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition™, led by Dr. Debra Miller, also determined in its studies which cocoa-containing foods are particularly beneficial to health, i.e. which contain the most antioxidants.
Dark chocolate and cocoa powder therefore have high levels of flavanols. A glass of hot chocolate, on the other hand, contains hardly any flavanols because the instant cocoa in it has been processed too industrially.
Milk chocolate, which is usually very high in fat, is also not recommended and is not effective in terms of weight gain and diabetes prevention.
Apart from the higher calorie content, milk chocolate generally provides more sugar and, most importantly, very little cocoa.
Therefore, you should always choose a chocolate with the highest possible cocoa content (at least 70 percent). It would be ideal if the chocolate were not sweetened with sugar, but with xylitol or coconut blossom sugar.
Therefore, just make your own chocolate. You can find out how to do this – very easily – here: Chocolate is worth a temptation.
Dark chocolate without milk content can do much more for us besides obesity and diabetes prevention. For example, it improves memory and strengthens the cardiovascular system.
