When facing the choice between milk and dark chocolate, yet another study suggests that reaching for dark chocolate is likely the more beneficial option.
People who ate at least five servings of dark chocolate per week had a 21% reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes, compared to people who rarely or never ate chocolate, according to a new study. Eating five servings of either kind of chocolate weekly was associated with a 10% reduced type 2 diabetes risk, compared to eating none.
“Our findings suggest that not all chocolate is created equal,” said lead author Binkai Liu, a doctoral student in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in a news release. “For anyone who loves chocolate, this is a reminder that making small choices, like choosing dark chocolate over milk chocolate, can make a positive difference to their health.”
The researchers noted that past research about dark chocolate consumption and type 2 diabetes risk has had inconsistent findings on whether or not it is beneficial, and few of those studies examined differences in milk chocolate vs. dark chocolate intake.
The new findings were published in the British medical journal BMJ and analyzed data from 192,208 nurses and health care workers who regularly reported their dietary habits via a survey and didn’t have type 2 diabetes at the outset. People who had heart problems were also excluded, as were people with cancer.
Study participants were asked how often they ate “one chocolate bar or pack,” and the researchers reported that they calculated each serving as being 1 ounce, calling it a standard food portion. One ounce is the equivalent of a small piece of chocolate.
Unsurprisingly, the more chocolate people ate, the greater likelihood of weight gain, although the researchers said this was most pronounced among milk chocolate eaters.
“We were surprised by the clear split between dark and milk chocolate’s impact on diabetes risk and long-term weight management,” said co-author Qi Sun, ScD, MD, a Harvard associate professor of medicine, nutrition, and epidemiology.
“Even though dark and milk chocolate have similar levels of calories and saturated fat, it appears that the rich polyphenols in dark chocolate might offset the effects of saturated fat and sugar on weight gain and diabetes. It’s an intriguing difference that’s worth exploring more.”
Abstract
Dark chocolate gets popularity for several decades due to its enormous health benefits. It contains several health-promoting factors (bioactive components – polyphenols, flavonoids, procyanidins, theobromines, etc, and vitamins and minerals) that positively modulate the immune system of human beings.
It confers safeguards against cardiovascular diseases, certain types of cancers, and other brain-related disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, etc. Dark chocolate is considered a functional food due to its anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-microbial properties.
It also has a well-established role in weight management and the alteration of a lipid profile to a healthy direction. But during the processing of dark chocolate, several nutrients are lost (polyphenol, flavonoids, flavan 3 ol, ascorbic acid, and thiamine).
So, fortification would be an effective method of enhancing the overall nutrient content and also making the dark chocolate self-sufficient. Thus, the focus of this review study is to gather all the experimental studies done on dark chocolate fortification.
Several ingredients were used for the fortification, such as fruits (mulberry, chokeberries, and elderberries), spices (cinnamon), phytosterols, peanut oil, probiotics (mainly Lactobacillus, bacillus spices), prebiotics (inulin, xanthan gum, and maltodextrin), flavonoids, flavan-3-ols, etc.
Those fortifications were done to raise the total antioxidant content as well as essential fatty acid content simultaneously reducing total calorie content. Sometimes, the fortification was done to improve physical properties like viscosity, rheological propertiesand also improve overall consumer acceptance by modifying its bitter taste.
Credit: webmd.com
