When you treat that special someone (or yourself) to a truffle, chocolate bar or pot de crème, you are really showing how much you take their well-being to heart. Once thought to be bad for you, new studies have shown that dark chocolate (not white or milk chocolate) has important health benefits. It’s even listed as a superfood, as it’s full of heart healthy antioxidants, B-vitamins, magnesium and potassium. What’s not to love about that?
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Delicious Benefits of Buying Fair Trade Chocolate
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Eat to Your Heart’s Content
The key to enjoying all these nutrients is to choose dark chocolate. Dark or semisweet chocolate attains this classification due to the percentage of cocoa found in each serving. As far as the health benefits go, the darker the chocolate, the higher the concentration of nutrients. Dark chocolate is rich in flavonoids, powerful antioxidants that help protect the cardiovascular system by lowering blood pressure and reducing the risk of blood clots and heart attack.
Classifications defining dark chocolate vary; the percentage to look for to enjoy the biggest health benefits is 70 to 75% cocoa solids with little or no added sugar. At Henry's Markets, we feature chocolate with up to 85% cocoa solids that is often organic and Fair Trade certified. These varieties of chocolate offer rich, deep chocolaty flavor, and are often crafted with single origin cacao beans.
A Little Goes a Long Way
While a higher cacao content equals a higher percentage of beneficial antioxidants, the more chocolate you enjoy doesn’t always add up to increased health benefits. Chocolate, dark or otherwise, still contains lots of fat and calories. For example, one ounce of dark chocolate contains 150 calories and 8-10 grams of fat. It’s best to enjoy chocolate in small quantities, savoring its rich flavor to the fullest.
Chocolate Classifications
All chocolate, except for white chocolate, is made from cacao beans that are fermented, dried, roasted and ground creating cacao nibs. These nibs are pureed and mixed with sugar and cocoa butter to create a liquid, called chocolate liquor. This liquid is tempered, which is a process of heating and cooling to exact temperatures, resulting in a creamy, smooth solid bar of chocolate. Use this guide to choosing the richest, most flavorful chocolate with the highest concentration of heart healthy antioxidants.
Milk Chocolate: 30% to 40% Cacao
Rich, creamy and often mixed with caramel, nuts, dried fruit or espresso beans, milk chocolate tastes great, but doesn’t offer the same health benefits found in dark chocolate.
Ingredients: sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, milk or milk powder, and vanilla
White Chocolate: 0% Cacao
White chocolate doesn’t contain any cocoa and is made with cocoa butter. It also tastes great, but doesn’t offer the same health benefits found in dark chocolate
Ingredients: sugar, cocoa butter, milk or milk powder, and vanilla
Dark Chocolate: 45% to 85% Cacao
Dark chocolate is often classified as semisweet, which means it contains some sugar and bittersweet, which is usually contains little or no sugar: the higher the percentage of cacao, the higher the health benefits. Dark chocolate is often used in baking, as well as savory dishes such as molé sauce.
Ingredients: sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, and vanilla (optional)
Cocoa: 100% Cacao
Cocoa is chocolate liquor with the cocoa butter removed. It is usually unsweetened and used for baking unless made into a convenient mix for hot or cold chocolate drinks. It is a great way to add rich chocolate flavor to baked goods without adding extra fat.
Cacao Nibs: 100% Cacao
Cacao nibs are the inner seed of fermented, dried cacao beans. They have a rich, earthy flavor and are delicious added to biscotti and cookies, or crushed and sprinkled over fudge brownies, yogurt or even mixed in a savory spice rub. They are free of dairy and sugar.
A Long History of Cacao Love
We are not the first people to covet the magical elixir of chocolate. The Aztecs and Mayas enjoyed chocolate over 2600 years ago and even used cacao beans as currency. The word for chocolate comes from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs from the word xocolatl, which is a combination of the two words: xocolli, meaning bitter and atl, which means water. Ancient Mayans enjoyed chocolate as an unsweetened hot beverage made with spicy chiles and annatto and flavored with vanilla with bitterness similar to coffee. This prized beverage was associated with Xochiquetzal, the goddess of fertility and used to increase energy levels and fight fatigue. Eventually, maize was added as a thickener, and honey and dried fruits as a sweetener, resulting in the hot cocoa we are familiar with today.
Gift of Chocolate
In the 1700s, when the Spanish brought chocolate to Europe, it was still enjoyed as a beverage. But it didn’t take long for the Europeans to make this “elixir of the gods” their own. First they replaced the chile pepper with sugar and it became an instant a hit with European nobility. Then its popularity inspired the French, English and Dutch to cultivate their own cacao plantations in their Caribbean colonies. Soon, chocolate prices dropped and a variety of chocolate drinks appeared at coffee houses throughout Europe.
In 1828, chocolate changed from liquid cocoa to powdery confection when a Dutch chocolate maker developed a mechanized method for extracting the cocoa butter from cacao beans. This process, called Dutching, created a powdered cocoa — treated with alkaline salts — that mixed easily with water. Soon, chocolatiers were mixing Dutch cocoa with sugar for chocolate drinks, while others added the cocoa butter back to create chocolate bars. The addition of milk or milk powder resulted in milk chocolate, while the invention of a process called conching took chocolate candy making to a new level of consistency.
Chocolate as an Aphrodisiac
The reasons why chocolate is the preferred gift on Valentine’s Day are no secret. Not only does chocolate taste delicious, it also contains a chemical called phenylethylamine, which mimics the feelings of euphoria associated with being in love. In the 18th century, French doctors even prescribed chocolate for women who suffered from depression or heartbreak.
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