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Dark chocolate is now a health food. Here's how that happened.
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"Healthy: Dark Chocolate
Mars Inc. - the company that has brought us M&M's or Snickers - sponsored 140 peer-reviewed scientific papers starting from the 80s. Mars controlled the research agenda and only funded the posi...
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Not really good for your health
The biggest health claim is that cocoa lowers blood pressure, but no study has proven that it reduces the risk of heart disease or attacks. And considering the added sugars it probably does more ha...
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The Aztec cocoa
- The cocoa we know now is very different from the one that first arrived in Europe from South America (in the 16th century).
- The Aztecs consumed cocoa as a drink and they believed i...
Cocoa comes to Europe
- In 1518, Hernan Cortes, a Spanish soldier and explorer reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (in the territory that is now Mexico).
- He and his men drank “chikolatl”, a bitter drink that contained roasted, crushed and then boiled (in water with spices and chilli) cocoa beans.
- They did not like it, but they knew that the king of the Aztecs, Montezuma II, consumed the drink around 50 times a day. So Hernan Cortes understood the potential of cocoa and brought it back to Spain following his conquest.
Chocolate: the taste we know today
- After they reached, Europe cocoa beans were crushed and mixed with honey and sugar, becoming a popular drink among the elites.
- Joseph Fry and Sons made the first chocolate bar in the 19th century, creating what we know as chocolate today.
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Ultra-Processed Foods
Ultra-processed foods like white bread, cereal, chips, and wafers are remarkably common, convenient, affordable, extremely profitable for the makers, come in strong flavors and are aggressively ma...
Our Everyday Foods
We consume ultra-processed foods every day without even realizing it.
- The morning cereal and flavored yogurt.
- The savory snacks and sweet baked goods.
- The vegan hotdog and the chicken nuggets available on the street.
- The doughnut or the premium protein bar we buy as a snack.
- The carton-packed almond milk put in our coffee or the diet coke we have.
More Light On Ultra-Processed Foods
Most cooked foods can be termed as 'processed foods', but ultra-processed foods are in a different domain, with few people having the clarity to differentiate.
A cooked carrot is processed food, but a bag of industrially-produced, carrot-flavored veggie puffs are ultra-processed and are still aimed at toddlers as a portion of natural food. Other examples include frozen peas or pasteurized milk.
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The origins of the breakfast myth
Much of the research suggesting that breakfast is essential for health is funded by cereal makers.
Companies like Kellogg, Quaker Oats and others whose businesses depend on p...
Breakfast and weight loss/gain
There’s no clear evidence that breakfast consumption promotes weight loss or that skipping breakfast leads to weight gain.
It might actually be a bad strategy for weight loss because eating breakfasts means taking in a higher number of calories/day.
The health halo of breakfast
...is not backed up by research.
It is possible for breakfast to have health benefits, especially for some groups (growing children and athletes), but there’s not a lot of good evidence behind those benefits.