late

Chocolate is almost a superfood, it's really good for you. But sugar kills.

So what's a guy to do?

Here's what I did, Trader Joes has a pound dark chocolate bar for $5.99, which is a steal. It's supposedly 85%, but it I suspect the real number is 70-75% chocolate.

I got 2 bars of Bakers unsweetened baking chocolate and melted them with the TJ bar. I add a scant tblsp of SugarRX, which is an artificial sweetener. I almost always use the hazelnut flavor.

After everything was mixed, I lined an 11 inch pan with aluminum foil, and chilled it.

The result was delicious, despite being about 90% chocolate, it wasn't bitter, and the liquid sweetener made the bars soft, melt in your mouth.

At my grocery store, a bottle is 7 bucks, on the internet, it's close to twice that. Shouldn't be hard to find.

SW84

White chocolate peanut butter cups or nothing.

late

White chocolate is just the fat extracted from chocolate. It's not actually chocolate..

SW84

I identify it as chocolate so it is.

PeteHski

Yeah, I've known this for quite a while. ZOE Nutrition very recently commented on this, but I haven't read the full article yet. I think they said dark chocolate above 70% counts as one of your 30 per week healthy plants. Our Supermarket sells a high quality organic 75% chocolate bar with added ginger and turmeric, which tastes great.

prj71

I just buy these.

https://www.lindtusa.com/85-percent-...nce-bar-392851

pdlamb

Chocolate is kinda like coffee. If you enjoy either more because the latest study indicates it's healthy to consume, better enjoy it this week. 'Cause another study is coming out next week with the opposite conclusion.

late

It's a process, we slowly learn, and improve what we know. What makes it confusing is that popular media doesn't take the time to add the context needed to assess the new information in light of the previous work.

dmanthree

Yeah, no. White chocolate is made from the fat extracted from cocoa beans but without some manufacturing steps. So it is chocolate.

dmanthree

If any of you subscribe to Consumer Reports they did quite a job on analyzing dark chocolate. Turns out some of them, like Hershey's Special Dark contain significant quantities of lead.

wolfchild

I eat regular Cadbury Milk Chocolate bar as a snack almost daily, good enough for me. Yes I know it has more sugar than dark chocolate, but so what ?..I also bring chocolate milk on my bike rides.

late

It's just fat.

rsbob 

and cadmium. Most dark chocolate in the market contain heavy metals. Read up on your faves to see if they are on ‘the list’.

jadmt

https://www.yuengling.com/our-beer/y...colate-porter/ Beer is good chocolate is good great combination. I have for years ate snickers bars and drank beer together.

SW84

spelger

Beer goes with everything, i have it with icecream, pies, burgers, cakes, spegeiiteh (no idea how to spell that).

rowerek

That would explain why last time when I was biking I felt so heavy and sluggish.

Kabuki12

Moderation is the key to any indulgence. Coffee , chocolate, or others.

mixteup

This !
Only sold during holiday season - It doesn't keep well, so drink it while you can :~)

jadmt

unfortunately I can not even get it here. I have tried.

jadmt

crap I have always thought it was Indulgence is the key to moderation...no wonder I can get rid of my gut...

SW84

I'm curious what the government says about chocolate, because they're here to help. 😉

wolfchild

I wouldn't go so far as to call chocolate a superfood, there are no superfoods out there, everything is just food...Chocolate is more of an exotic treat, eat it for pleasure...I enjoy chocolate for it's taste, I don't eat chocolate because I think that it will turn me into superhuman....As for sugar killing people, not really. Excessive sugar consumption is harmful, but using sugar in a smart responsible way isn't all that bad. Remember that every type of carbohydrate which you consume turns into sugar inside your body. If sugar was so deadly we would all become extinct.

late

"After following the participants for 3.6 years, the researchers found that while — when compared with the placebo group — the cocoa supplement group was not statistically less likely to have cardiovascular events including heart attacks and strokes, they did have a 27 percent reduction in cardiovascular deaths. Dr. Manson called these results “promising signals for heart protection,” though she emphasized that another trial is needed to confirm the findings before translating them into recommendations for cocoa flavanol intake."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/12/w...-benefits.html

MinnMan

The way CR reported it, one would think that high lead and cadmium come from one brand and not another. But the source isn't the manufacturing process - it's that cocoa plants leach heavy metals from the soil from which they are grown. Assuming that a particular "brand" sources cocoa beans from an array of places, the "bad" brands likely had recently purchased beans from places with more metals in the soil. It doesn't mean that that brand is always high in metals, or that the "good" ones (low lead, low cadmium in the CR tests) stay "good".

so it's hard to know which brand is "better". It's also hard to know whether the levels of lead and cadmium outweigh the benefits of dark chocolate. For older people, the risks are probably less than for children or for women of reproductive age..