The original advocate: Gene Wilder, the first Willy Wonka, from the 1971 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
It’s not clear that Willy Wonka’s river flowed with dark chocolate. If it did, Roald Dahl’s lunatic chocolatier was on to something miraculous, and 40-odd years ahead of the rest of us. A host of recent European studies all point to the same delightful fact, namely, that dark chocolate is a superfood with many surprising health benefits.
The secret, as close readers of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will recall, is the cacao bean. Beloved by Oompa Loompas (see below), it is chocolate’s main ingredient. Cacao gives chocolate its robust taste, and though it’s packed with healthy flavonoids and theobromine, you won’t want to eat it by itself. (It’s disgustingly bitter.) Cacao gets an assist—in flavour, not health effects—from the milk, sugar, and butter in common chocolate bars.
Here are seven delicious facts about chocolate we bet you didn’t know—with accompanying images from one of the all-time great children’s movies.
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1) Chocolate is good for your heart
The good news: A recent study of 31,000 Swedish women confirmed chocolate’s cardiovascular benefits. Over nine years, subjects that ate one or two servings of dark chocolate each week cut their risk for heart failure by a third.
The even better news: A 2015 German study found that a daily square of dark chocolate lowered blood pressure and reduced heart attack and stroke by 39 per cent. Credit goes to the antioxidant compounds called flavonoids, which increase the flexibility of veins and arteries. A chocolate bar has five times the flavonoids of an apple.
And one caveat: Those antioxidants come with generous helpings of sugar, milk, and butter. The less sugar it takes to help the medicine down, the better, however. Stick to chocolate 70 percent cacao or higher, and limit yourself to 200 grams a week.
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Chocolate helps you lose weight
Take note, Augustus Gloop.
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have discovered a wonderful, if counterintuitive, fact—that the dark (chocolate) path leads to a lighter you. Because dark chocolate promotes greater feelings of satisfaction than its lighter cousin, it diminishes cravings for sweet, salty, and fatty foods. Sticking to your overall diet is now easier than ever. When snackishness next strikes, reach for a modest portion of dark chocolate. What could be sweeter?
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Chocolate makes you smarter
Smart enough to outwit Slugworth?
Researchers at the University of Nottingham have found that drinking cocoa rich in flavanols boosts blood flow to key parts of the brain for 2 to 3 hours, which can improve performance and alertness in the short term. An Oxford study looked at chocolate’s long-term effects on the brain by examining the diets of more than 2,000 people over age 70. They found that those who consumed flavanol-rich chocolate, wine, or tea scored higher on cognitive tests than those who didn’t.
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Chocolate in pregnancy keeps mom and baby happy
With luck, the kid turns out better than Mike Teavee.
A 2004 Finnish study found that pregnant women who ate chocolate daily handled routine stress better than expectant mothers who abstained. Even better, their babies pregnancy were more active and “positively reactive”—a measure encompassing traits such as smiling and laughing.
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Chocolate fights stress
Don’t panic, it’s only a psychedelic boat ride.
When the going gets tough, the tough often turn to chocolate. Turns out that’s a pretty smart thing. The fiendish part of stress is the cortisol it releases into your system. But Swiss scientists have found that a 30-gram dose of dark chocolate every day for for two weeks diminished cortisol levels, significantly easing stress. Next time you’re in the midst of a stress episode, skip the ice cream for a piece of dark chocolate.
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Chocolate helps prevent diabetes
Blueberries, represented here by Violet Beauregard, are another diabetes-fighting superfood.
In a small Italian study, participants who ate 45 grams of dark chocolate each day for a fortnight saw their potential for insulin resistance drop by half. “Flavonoids increase nitric oxide production,” says lead doctor Claudio Ferri. “And that helps control insulin sensitivity.”
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Chocolate protects your skin
The Oompa Loompa diet is rich in cacao beans.
London researchers wanted to test the sun-screening capacity of flavanols, a class of flavonoids. Their findings were shocking. After three months of eating chocolate dense with flavanols, subjects developed a resistance to sun exposure. It took them twice as long to develop the redness that indicates the beginning of sunburn. Subjects who ate conventional chocolate, low in flavanols, experienced no such protection.
