by Mary Pat Withem

Created on: July 08, 2007

Lets clarify something here, chocolate is made out of a plant called cocoa beans.

Chocolate has something called flavonoids which can help prevent heart diseases and cancer. Flavonoid is a chemical found in fruits and vegetables so you shouldn't be avoiding your fruits and veggies to eat chocolate just because they all have the same chemical.

There are studies that find antioxidants are at a higher level in wine and cocoa than most everything else and that is a good thing. Remember, chocolate is made out of cocoa and sugar.

Now, before you go out and drink hot chocolate and assume you're drinking an extremely healthy drink, you should know this...

Most all chocolate mix drinks have alkali in it (alkali is also known as dutch chocolate) and it lowers the amount of flavonoids in the drink. Knowing that, you can get plain cocoa (non-dutch) and mix it with your own sweetener. Having done that, you'll have a drink that's flavonoid rich.

There have been studies to prove that dark chocolate (not anything else) is what you should be eating. It's the healthiest of all the kinds of chocolate you can eat. Dark chocolate is found to lower blood pressure but keep in mind what you will read next....

Chocolate is very high in calories, that's why it's not recommended to focus only on chocolate for your health needs. But MODERATION is the key and you can eat chocolate! Avoid milk when eating chocolate because it can prevent any kind of absorption that you need in your body to get the chemicals in your body.

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