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Chocolate as a Healthy Food

Written in: Grade 7 | Year: 2009

“So noble a confection, more than nectar and ambrosia, the true food of the Gods.” Says Dr. Bachot. A man of his word he is. Chocolate is a noble confection. So noble, that when your parents tell you “Chocolate’s bad for you,” or “I don’t want you getting ‘high’ off of chocolate,” you have a positive reason.” Well Mom, if chocolate is eaten on a balanced diet, it may actually be good for you.”

Good morning teachers, principal, and fellow classmates. Today you will not only be learning about chocolate, but the history that lies behind it, what is really in it, some types and ingredients as well as some of those astonishing heath facts.

We tend to think that chocolate is from a more modern time, but it actually dates back almost 2500 years ago, to the ancient cultures of Mexico and Central America. This includes the Maya and Aztec people who drank it as a wonderfully frothy and rather spicy beverage.

The Maya grew cacao (Kah-Kay-oh) trees in their backyards where they got harvested, fermented, roasted, and their seeds were ground into a paste. When the paste was mixed with cornmeal, water, and several other ingredients, it became that delicious beverage I was telling you about earlier. The Aztecs eventually adapted to cacao as well.

Drinking chocolate was paramount part of the Maya and Aztec lifestyle. It was drunk on occasion, but more frequently when status was royalty. Therefore, Kings and Queens got more than everyone else.

Later, the Aztecs began to share cacao with the Spanish. The Spanish began to add cinnamon, sugar, and other components to the drink to make it sweeter. Chocolate soon became a European symbol of wealth and power. Most of the slaves did the cacao farming.

Cacao farming caused a lot of work and labour. Some labourers had minimum wage while the enslaved people got not even a penny.
By the 1800’s, more and more people were capable of purchasing chocolate because it was more affordable, mass produced, and made into a solid chocolate candy. Although it’s pretty unfortunate what we put into chocolate nowadays.

Today’s typical milk chocolate bar contains sugar, milk, coco butter, chocolate liquor, soy lecithin, and vanillin for flavor. But that’s not all! Chocolate also contains 300 other chemicals as well. WAY too many to list!
Milk chocolate is not the only type of chocolate out there. There are also other types such as unsweetened chocolate, bitter sweet chocolate, semi sweet chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, caramel and nougat filled chocolates, as well as nut filled chocolates too! Some of the thousand of popular chocolate name brands out there are Mars, Twix, Crunchie, Reese’s cups, Reese’s pieces, Smarties, Kit-Kat, Aero, Hershey, and my favourite, Toblerone. On the other hand, all these sweets are healthy, depending on how you look at it.

Some of the health benefits of chocolate are that if you drank a cup of hot chocolate before a meal, it may actually lower or possibly get rid of your appetite. Or those men who eat chocolate might live a year longer than men who don’t. Out of all the chocolates, dark is probably your best choice. Dark chocolate has close to eight times more the antioxidants than strawberries. Back in “the day”, Mexican healers used chocolate to heal bronchitis and insect bites. It’s pretty clear that there is a bad side to chocolate as well. Chocolate is high in calories, sugar and saturated fat, Ick. Chocolate also causes headaches in migraine sufferers. Chocolate will not make you high unless you eat at least 25 pounds in one sitting, and it is not addictive. Ya, there goes your excuse of why you eat it.

Just keep in mind: If chocolate is eaten on a balanced diet, it can be good for you. You want to maintain your pant size, not gain one or more pant sizes.