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The Chocolate Myth Factory - health claims of chocolate
Nutrition Action Healthletter, March, 2001 by Bonnie Liebman
"Like any food with high calorie density, it's very easy to overeat chocolate, so you have to watch portions carefully," says Pennsylvania State's Barbara Rolls.
And the way we typically eat chocolate makes us crave it even more.(6) "If you eat chocolate between meals, when you're most hungry, it rapidly satisfies your hunger and that reinforces your craving for it," she explains.
Her advice: "Break the cycle by having a delicious piece of chocolate at the end of a meal, when you're already satisfied, and you'll be less likely to overindulge. One fine Belgian chocolate has fewer calories than a full-blown dessert."
Myth #4 Chocolate fits into a healthy diet.
"What my research is showing is that you shouldn't think that chocolate is a bad food if it's eaten in the context of a good diet, but you can't go out and eat a lot of it," Penny Kris-Etherton told The New York Times last November.
Truth: Sure, there's room for a little chocolate nestled in among the fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, fat-free milk, skinless chicken breast, and grilled fish in a stellar diet. The problem is that many Americans eat chocolate in the context of a lousy diet, one loaded with cheeseburgers, pizza, french fries, fried chicken, ice cream, Cinnabons, croissants, doughnuts, and dozens of other fatty, fattening foods. We need chocolate like we need portable pats of butter to swallow between meals.
"There's no reason to take the enjoyment out of eating chocolate in moderate quantities," says Tufts' Alice Lichtenstein. But people shouldn't think that more is better. "No one would recommend adding chocolate calories to the diet, because we're consuming too many calories anyway," she adds.
The bottom line: If people think that they're eating chocolate for their health rather than for pleasure, says Lichtenstein, "the data gets thin."
CHOCK FULL OF ...
Calories should be the first concern of any die-hard chocolate-lover, because those calories are concentrated in such a compact quantity of food. And chocolate's saturated fat can cut into your 20-gram daily budget ... even if you stick with the (mostly) modest serving shown here. Many chocolate bars also come in king sizes, especially in movie theaters. (Within each category, the products are ranked from best to worst--least to most saturated fat, then total fat, then sugar.)
[CHART OMITTED]
(1) Amer. J. Clin. Nutr. 65: 1489, 1997.
(2) Arch. Inter. Med. 155: 381, 1995.
(3) Lancet 1: 943, 1957.
(4) J. Nutr. 130:2109S, 2000.
(5) Ann. Intern. Med. 125: 384, 1996.
(6) Appetite 32: 219, 1999.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Center for Science in the Public Interest
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
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