Eat the Chocolate, friend

If you love chocolate and have you been waiting for someone to tell you that chocolate is nourishing than today is your lucky day. Read on!

I always used to say, long before becoming a nutritionist, "I will never EVER give up eating chocolate!" I said this with the deep and subconscious belief that chocolate = bad and should be avoided in order to be healthy. Our modern day world has successfully manipulated us into categorizing food into "good" and "bad" or "healthy" and "unhealthy". My statement was insinuating that chocolate was bad and despite that I was going to live my life and eat it anyways!

Many years later as an R.H.N I still say, "I will never EVER give up eating chocolate!" Same statement, completely different meaning. This time I say it from a place of absolute love for myself and trust in my body. With the knowledge of nutrition and the continuous and intentional excavation of societies (mainly diet culture and wellness industry's) rhetoric that certain foods are "bad". (carbs, fats, sugars etc. Spoiler alert: we need them all! But more on that later..)

This blog post is here to help educate you on one of societies common “health villains” and show you another side of the coin. My hope is that it will help remove any guilt or shame around consuming food and give yourself permission to eat the freaking chocolate! :)

GOOD FOR YOUR GUT

Chocolate is a significant prebiotic and feeds the good bacteria in our gut. There it is...the news you have been waiting for! It seems that beneficial bacteria like bifidobacterium and lactobacillus in the gut love to gobble up chocolate as much as we do. In return for the feast, the good bacteria turn the phytonutrients in chocolate into anti-inflammatories that help with overall health! (It's okay if this blows your mind a bit, it did for me too!)

This is all based on new research presented at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS)

But what about craving chocolate? Is this a craving for magnesium like so many people have speculated? Apparently not. Your gut microbes can control what you eat. I bet you thought it was you but it is not. Both good and bad bacteria can manipulate the vagus nerve –the key connection between the brain and the gut, to make you think that you want to eat certain foods and that includes chocolate. Different bacteria want to eat different foods and whatever bacteria have an advantage in numbers, determines what you crave. By having you eat more of a given food, they help keeps their numbers strong. The gut bacteria can even manipulate you to feel anxious and depressed and signal you to eat a given food “to feel better”. There is still a lot of research to be done, including how we are influenced to overeat and under eat by gut bacteria. In the meantime, the next time you crave chocolate, you do not have to feel guilty, knowing that it is your good bacteria talking to you to give them a good meal.

Stay tuned for some of my fave chocolate recipes in the coming weeks! Comment below what type of chocolate recipes you'd like to see!

xo,

Jess

References:Prebiotic evaluation of cocoa-derived flavanols in healthy humans by using a randomized, controlled, double-blind, crossover intervention study1,2,3, Xenofon Tzounis et al, Am J Clin Nutr January 2011 vol. 93 no. 1 62-72Is eating behavior manipulated by the gastrointestinal microbiota? Evolutionary pressures and potential mechanisms, Joe Alcock et al, BioEssays, Volume 36, Issue 10, pages 940–949, October 2014