Chocolate's gotten a lot of favorable press lately for its positive effects on health, which include lowering your blood pressure and improving your blood circulation. However, like most foods, chocolate offers negative health effects along with positive influences on your health. Some bad points about chocolate include its potential effects on your blood sugar and cholesterol levels. Some types of chocolate are better than others; if you want to indulge, you should learn what types to avoid and what types to enjoy.
Sugar
Chocolate comes from the cacao bean, which offers plentiful antioxidants known as flavonoids, which are responsible for chocolate's beneficial effects on human health. However, commercially available chocolates, especially the less-expensive variety, tend to contain more sugar than cacao, as cacao costs more for the food maker than sugar. When you eat too much sugar, it can raise your blood sugar levels too high and potentially increase your risk of obesity and diabetes. To make sure the chocolate you choose doesn't have this effect, pick one that lists "cocoa" or "chocolate liqueur" as the first ingredient, not sugar.
Fat
Pure chocolate contains fat in the form of cocoa butter, which is a saturated fat, and saturated fats increase your cholesterol and your risk of heart disease. However, better chocolates -- those with a greater percentage of cacao and less sugar -- can offset this effect due to high levels of phenolic acids, chemicals found in plants that might help reduce the risk of heart disease. Again, quality counts: if you choose a brand of chocolate that's mostly made up of cacao, not other ingredients such as sugar or milk, you'll enjoy the positive health benefits of chocolate and potentially avoid the bad points.
Cacao
Chocolate itself has a stimulating effect on the body; some people like this effect, which feels similar to the effect caffeine has on your system, but others do not. This stimulating effect comes from theobromine, a close relative of caffeine found in cacao. Candy high in cacao can make you feel more alert and even "buzzed" if you consume enough of it. If you're particularly sensitive to caffeine, you might react badly if you consume a large quantity of cacao-rich chocolate candy. Very dark chocolate -- especially if it's advertised as "raw" or "minimally processed" -- contains the most theobromine.
Considerations
Although chocolate does have some potentially negative health effects, other ill effects attributed to it actually aren't true. For example, chocolate doesn't cause pimples, and it also doesn't cause cavities unless you eat chocolate with too much sugar in it. To avoid the known bad points about chocolate, you should aim to choose chocolate bars as dark as possible, with as little sugar and as much pure chocolate as possible. Avoid milk chocolate, because the milk content dilutes the healthful antioxidants in the cacao, and don't overindulge. Just enjoy a square or two at a time.
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