Is Dark Chocolate Healthy?
Chocolate has never failed to entertain people. Aside from its beyond pleasant taste, it can enhance one’s mood due to its nutritional contents. However, chocolate is not always healthy. When its processing takes too long, it is bound to lose its flavonoids which have antioxidant qualities that help fight free radicals that can cause certain types of illnesses.
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Chocolate Tree
Assumingly, you know that chocolate comes from the cacao. Here are some interesting infos about the “tree of life” of all the chocophiles out there.
Cacao trees are small evergreen trees measuring around 6 meters tall. Such trees are producing fruit and flowers all throughout the year and are farmed in countries within 10 degrees North and 10 degrees South of the Equator in which the climate is best for the growth of these cacao trees given that they need a warm and humid environment. More to these, cacao trees require soil that is fertile and well-irrigated, plus regular rainfall, for their optimum growth.
Cacao trees normally grow in rainforests. Shades of heavy canopy fall on them and they use it to their benefit since they grow best when covered with some sort of shade.
In the wild, these trees grow underneath the larger evergreen trees and are often seed along rivers.
Just so you know, cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia now in Mexico, Central America and South America. The leading suppliers of cacao are Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Indonesia.
It takes around five years for a cacao tree to yield its first crop. It becomes an adult plant come year ten. It yields between 300 and 1000 pounds of cocoa per acre for approximately 50 years.
The seed pods grow directly off the trunk of the tree, instead of the ends of the branches. Every pod is the size of a pineapple measuring between 5 and 12 inches long and between 3 and 5 inches wide. It usually has about thirty to fifty seeds inside. It takes around 400 to 500 seeds to come up with a pound of chocolate. Cocoa beans, which are used in making chocolate, are the dried and fully fermented fatty seeds of the cacao tree.
Actually, cacao flowers are not pollinated by bees or butterflies like most flowers, but by forcipomyia midges which are like tiny flies. And just a fun fact, these midges have the fastest wing-beats of any creature on earth, about 1000 times per second!
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Organic Chocolates
Organic chocolate was deemed unsuitable before, but it doesn’t hold true any longer. More and more people involved in the chocolate-making industry are getting their growers in tropical climes to grow organic cacao. They are derived from the tropical cacao tree, no synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers are used in growing them.
Fair trade practices aids in making sure that the workers are paid a living wage, work in safer conditions, and can access health care, education and other important opportunities even though they aren’t necessarily eco-friendly.
The taste of organic dark chocolate is described by chocolovers as a near-transcendent experience. Anyone who has a take on it?
You can go for organic chocolate when you want to give something to a chocoholic friend, while at it, you get to help Mother Earth, as well.
Chocolate has been a star in the human palate and heart ever since it was discovered. It started from being one of the most cherished foods on the planet, now it takes the limelight of being the most studied. Scientists claim that there are several health benefits of chocolates. The chocolates also contain many chemicals that act in a pleasant way on the moods of those who get to eat it.
But of course, there are several negative impacts that come with chocolates. Surprise, surprise. Chocolate is packed with sugar, especially when you don’t opt for the dark type. To make it yummy and low in carbs, it takes some ingenuity but it can be surely done.
Studies of today also display how good chocolate is for the heart. Studies indicate that chocolate can improve blood vessel responsiveness blood pressure, and cholesterol. For improving glucose tolerance other studies have shown it has potential, which is significant to people who are using low-carb diets to lessen blood glucose spikes.
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