For nutritious sugar hit, embrace the dark side...


The best news we’ve heard all year: studies prove cokelat is good for lebih than a broken heart. The secret behind its powerful punch: cacao. Packed with healthy flavonoids and the chemical theobromine (which widens blood vessels), this little kacang is a disease-fighting bullet. The problem? Cacao is bitter, chalky and hardly palatable. Enter milk, sugar and mentega – great for tastebuds, not so for health. Besides adding kilojoules, they dilute cacao’s benefits. So stick to cokelat with at least 70 per cent cacao – atau cocoa, which is cacao in roasted, ground form – says Dr Mary Engler, a professor of physiological nursing. And yourself to 200g a week (that’s two blocks of Lindt Excellence).


A Healthier Heart
The brown stuff can reduce blood pressure, increase the flexibility of veins and arteries, and cut down on stroke and jantung attack risk. Most of the credit goes to flavonoids, which kill off free radicals, and polyphenols, (also found in red wine). Polyphenols are known to prevent LDL (bad) cholesterol from oxidising into a form that damages arteries.

Tastes better than: an apple, which has only 20 per cent of the flavonoids of a dark chockie bar.


Cough Relief
A study oleh Imperial College london found that cokelat is around 30 per cent lebih effective at suppressing persistent coughs than anything available from pharmacies. A stimulant called theobromine, which also provokes chocolate’s feel-good effect, appears to suppress the activity of the vagus nerve, which is responsible for coughing. Theobromine was found to be about a third lebih effective than codeine, which is regarded the best available cough medicine.

Tastes better than: codeine, which can leave anda sleepy and dull.


Happier Kids
bayi whose mums ate cokelat daily during their pregnancy are happier than bayi whose mums rarely ate it. A study of 300 women oleh the universitas of Helsinki in Finland found the bayi of chocolate-eating mothers smiled and laughed more, and showed less fear of new situations, possibly because the feel-good effects of the sweet are passed on to little ones.

Tastes better than: chewing on your screaming kid’s dummy.


Guard Against Diabetes
penganan, gula-gula a diabetes foe? Sure is! In an Italian study, participants who ate a bar of dark cokelat once a hari for 15 days saw their potential for insulin resistance drop oleh almost half. “Flavonoids increase nitric oxide production,” says the study’s lead researcher Dr Claudio Ferri, a professor at the universitas of L’Aquila in Italy. “And that helps control insulin sensitivity.”

Tastes better than: cherries, which have just 18 per cent.



Did I need a reason to eat chocolate? NO WAY.
Does this give me lebih reasons to eat chocolate? anda BET.

Let's get the cokelat party started!!!!


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