Dr Rupy: I love chocolate. I eat it most days as a snack or as a dessert with some fresh berries, apples or simply on its own. It is phenomenal and I've always loved it. But what about the health benefits? Well today, we're doing a deep dive into the science behind why chocolate can improve your brain health, your heart health, your gut health and even help you live longer. And yes, it does need to be dark chocolate, but you'll find out how dark you need to go for the benefits on today's podcast. This luxurious treat is pretty amazing. When we did this deep dive as part of our research with the Doctor's Kitchen team, we already decided that we're going to have to do another episode where we talk about the processing methods, the sourcing, the history and how you can tell what is good versus bad quality chocolate in the supermarkets. And yes, I am going to do a live taste test on YouTube where you can also watch this episode as well. So if you want to watch my smiling face as I talk about my favourite treat, then go to YouTube, the link is in the caption. And if you are listening on your podcast player, do us a favour, hit the notification bell on Apple or Spotify. It really does help us rank higher up the podcast and get more information to listen to this wonderful information around, I mean, chocolate. Who didn't want to know about the health benefits of chocolate? I really hope you enjoyed today's episode. And if you want to dive deeper into ingredients, you will love our free seasonal Sundays newsletter that goes out every Sunday and we do a deep dive into ingredients like chocolate, but also spices or celeriac or certain brassica vegetables or the humble ingredients that have powerful benefits you didn't even know about. On to my podcast about my favourite ingredient, chocolate.
Dr Rupy: Can dark chocolate make you smarter, improve your heart health, feed your microbiota? We're going to be doing a deep dive into the world of chocolate, the science behind chocolate bars, the human studies, how you can choose quality chocolate in the shop and my favourite personal ways in which to enjoy dark chocolate. So, benefit number one, can dark chocolate make you smarter? So, a number of studies suggest that dark chocolate or cocoa consumption can improve our mental abilities. And I want to, I just want to point to one meta-analysis combining data from seven human trials totalling around 500 healthy adults. Now, in each trial, the participants were given daily doses of dark chocolate or cocoa powder ranging from 10 to 50 grams. So pretty accurate in terms of how much one would typically eat in a 24-hour period. And then they were given different cognitive tests. The results showed that dark chocolate consumption can improve two key areas of a person's abilities. Their mental skills, referred to as executive function, something that unfortunately degrades with people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment, as well as how easily they can come up with words within a given time frame. This is known as verbal fluency. So there does appear to be a positive result when looking at those two different ways of assessing brain health and brain ability. So what is it in dark chocolate that could actually benefit the brain? Well, to make chocolate, we use these little powerhouses called cocoa beans and they come from yellow fruits growing on cacao trees. These are the main ingredient in dark chocolate. I just want to say dark chocolate is the healthiest and you probably already knew I was going to say that. What's special about them is that they're loaded with a number of different polyphenols, these beneficial plant compounds that have a multitude of effects in the body. One of the big players are flavonoids, specifically flavanols, such as epicatechin. It's also something that you find in green tea, black tea and coffee. They're kind of like the most valuable player, the MVP of cocoa beans and we'll be coming back to these flavanols quite a lot during this episode. But flavanols, I want to say that again, flavanols, not flavonoids. Flavonoids is the umbrella term, flavanols is a specific type of flavonoid. They're not flying solo because cocoa beans also contain a myriad of other polyphenols as well as things like dietary fibres, minerals such as magnesium and copper. The likelihood is that it is the entourage effect of having all these different players that yield to some benefits that we've seen in the study that I just mentioned as well. There is one particular study that shows the importance of flavanols found in cocoa. It's a very small trial, I just want to say that as a caveat first off, 18 people and researchers split them into two groups. One received a low flavanol cocoa drink and the other a high flavanol cocoa drink. So they were essentially blinded because you can't really tell the difference. I'm drinking in front of me if you're watching this on YouTube, a cacao drink. It's just hot water and raw cacao mixed together. It's quite bitter, almost like a coffee, black coffee alternative, like an espresso alternative. And I'm drinking it because I need my verbal fluency right now. These two participants were were given, these two groups of participants were given these two different drinks, can't tell the difference. And after two hours, they were asked to tackle a series of selective attention tasks known as the Stroop task. And they found that those who had the high flavanol cocoa drink performed better in the most difficult tasks compared to those who had the low flavanol drink. Now, there are lots of caveats with that study, low number, no control or placebo. So the question is, how does this happen? Well, research suggests that the active compounds found in cocoa beans could act on different molecular targets in the body, which can improve brain function. So cocoa flavanols could improve blood flow to the brain. That's one of the ways in which this can work. In the same trial that we just talked about with the low flavanol and the high flavanol drink, researchers found that the participants who had the high flavanol cocoa drink had faster and greater brain oxygenation. Flavanols have the ability to improve blood flow. It's one of the most well-known effects. They've been shown to increase the formation of something called nitric oxide. We've done a whole podcast episode on nitric oxide and why that's good for blood flow and brain oxygenation as well as cardiac health as well. It's basically a molecule that widens blood vessels and improves blood flow. So that could potentially help supply oxygen to brain neurons, which is particularly important when your brain is tackling a demanding task like doing a podcast staring down the lens of a camera, for example, or doing a test in an examination setting. It's kind of like adding extra lanes to a highway during rush hour. It just makes the traffic flow smoother and faster and you're better able to get from A to B. The second way in which it can potentially improve brain function is by protecting the brain from oxidative stress and inflammation. So flavanols, as well as the other polyphenols that you find in cocoa beans, also show antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. So they can reduce oxidative stress and inflammation that can protect brain cells. And it's important to realise that inflammation and oxidative stress are byproducts of your brain cells just doing their job. By churning through fuel, i.e. sugar in the form of glucose, you are always going to have some byproducts that are inflammatory. And so if you can buffer that with some extra ingredients in your diet, it stands to reason that you lower oxidative stress, you lower inflammation and you can potentially improve the function of things like your brain cells as well. The third way that it could potentially improve brain health is by modulating the gut microbiota and gut brain axis. So within your body, you have connections between your brain and your gut. And this is mediated in both ways. So when your gut is having a bad time, it's full of inflammation, it's got an imbalance in the good versus bad bugs. I hate saying that term because I think it's a lot more nuanced than that, but for ease and simplicity's sake, let's just assume that you have a an unfavourable pattern of bugs that lead to bloating and inflammation. That signals to your brain that stuff isn't going right down here and that can lead to uh effects on your mental health and your mood. And similarly it works in the other way around as well. So if you are stressed, you probably have had an experience where you don't feel quite right in your gut either. And that leads to expressions that have lasted millennia where people have a gut feeling about something or something in their gut is telling them intuitively that something's not right and that can be either in a physical sense or in a metaphorical sense as well. Flavanols and fibre in cocoa beans, which is a very important component, can act as what we call prebiotics. So these are specialized types of fibres that can improve the diversity and composition of your gut microbes. And that beneficial effect on the gut microbiome can positively impact the central nervous system via the gut brain axis. Now, I want to talk a bit more about the limitations of all the studies that I've just talked about. These findings are promising, but there are lots of limitations to these studies, particularly as they would all be considered of low quality with a high risk of bias. The researchers didn't always account for differences in an individual's diet, the lifestyle of the participants, the number of participants was obviously quite low, 18 in one of the studies. Uh they didn't allow for subgroup analysis. So think of everything that I've just talked about as work in progress, interesting mechanisms, laying down the foundation for a sturdy building, a story that is being written in progress. Let's move on to the potential benefit number two, which is heart health. Now, I think this is probably the most well-known benefit of cocoa and its active compounds. And we've got two important pieces of evidence. Observational studies. So in observational studies, researchers have found an association between eating dark chocolate and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Some of these studies were compiled in a meta-analysis that was published in the BMJ in 2019, which included 23 prospective studies and over 400,000 participants. Sounds very impressive, but remember, observational means that they find an association, but it doesn't necessarily prove a causation. Looking further afield, we also have clinical trials. So in clinical trials, when researchers gave participants dark chocolate or cocoa products for a minimum of two weeks, they found a small but significant reduction in participants' blood pressure. This can reduce the risk of cardiovascular events. It's one of the most important things that we as medical practitioners always look for. We screen for it, we uh treat uh uh blood pressure with medications, but also with lifestyle as well. And according to a Cochrane review published in 2017, including 35 trials, they used big, they used a big range of doses between one and 100 grams of cocoa products per day to show a benefit in blood pressure. So, there is some evidence that it can be beneficial for cardiac health. There is some evidence that it can reduce blood pressure, but there's a wide, wide variation in the doses used of the chocolate. So, before we get into uh the question of how much chocolate do I need to consume to have these potential benefits, let's again dive into the mechanism to ask the question, how can dark chocolate improve cardiac health? How can it improve heart health? How can it lower blood pressure? So in a similar way to brain health, researchers have suggested some potential mechanisms. Like we said earlier, blood flow. We've talked about the potential effects of flavanols found in cocoa beans to increase the production of nitric oxide, which promotes vasodilation, fancy word for widening the vessels and thus lowering blood pressure. How do they do that exactly? Well, let's imagine that you are drinking some chocolate like I'm doing right now on YouTube. And uh or let's say, you know, if you if you don't like drinking what is quite a bitter drink, imagine you're eating a bar of uh dark chocolate. So after we eat cocoa in this dark chocolate or the drink, uh the flavanols are released from the food matrix. So when I say food matrix, that is the uh food structure in which all the compounds that make chocolate are bound together. And when they reach the small intestine, some of these flavanols are absorbed and some are metabolized by the large intestine by your gut microbes. These are the uh microbes that include largely bacteria, but also viruses, fungi, nematodes, they break down your food and then they create metabolites. Both of these paths eventually break them down into these metabolites. And these metabolites can trigger the cells that line our blood vessels to produce a key enzyme called Enos, also known as nitrate synthesis. And this helps make nitric oxide, which when released, activates pathways in the cells that cause blood vessels to widen, which allows more blood flow through them and thus lowers blood pressure. So that's one mechanism in which it can improve brain function and it can improve cardiac function as well. So that's potential mechanism number one. Okay, so that's potential mechanism number one. The second way is almost looking at blood pressure through the other lens. So it's actually how it blocks the constriction of blood vessels. So not only can they widen blood vessels, but they can prevent the constriction of blood vessels too. So cocoa flavanols have been shown to regulate the activity of another enzyme called angiotensin converting enzyme, also abbreviated to ACE. ACE, which is released by the kidneys, can cause blood vessels to constrict. It's a very important mechanism. If you're blocking that enzyme, then it causes the opposite, it causes them to dilate. It acts in a very similar way to some of the medications that we use in medical practice. You might have heard of them, they're called captopril, enalapril, perindopril, they always have a pril at the end of it. And these are called ACE inhibitors. There are lots of other medications that we use in blood pressure management. That's just one of them. So, if you look at this figure on YouTube, unfortunately, if you're listening to this, you won't be able to see it, but I'll describe it to you. It basically, it's a kind of a complicated diagram, but in essence, it shows the vessels, the cocoa flavanols, and it shows the pathways that they are affecting. Nitric oxide synthase as well as ACE as well. Now, some of you might also be asking, okay, I get that it improves cardiac health from the perspective of blood pressure. I understand that it improves blood flow, but what about the fat content of dark chocolate? If you look at a packet of dark chocolate, you'll see that it has a good amount of fat in it, and a good amount of that fat is saturated fat, which can be confusing, especially in terms of heart health and cholesterol levels. Most people understand correctly that the more saturated fat in your diet, it can push up levels of cholesterol in your blood, and high levels of cholesterol correlates with worse cardiovascular outcomes. But it's a little bit more nuanced than that. So let's look at this diagram that I'll explain for those listening on audio, at the exact types of fats that you find in cocoa. In quality dark chocolate, the fats that come from cocoa beans, which contains around 50% of fats known as cocoa butter, there are two-thirds of that fat content in cocoa that comes from two saturated fatty acids. So the, just to clarify there, cocoa butter is the main type of fat that you find in quality chocolate, and it comes from two-thirds of that cocoa butter is mainly saturated fat. The two types of saturated fat are palmitic acid and stearic acid. And so if you're looking on YouTube, you'll see the typical fatty acid composition of cocoa butter and the types of fatty acids that you find in them. The third main type of fat is something called oleic acid, which is a monounsaturated fatty acid that has a neutral effect and maybe even a cardioprotective effect on heart health. And that's, you know, you find it in olive oil, which is known to be heart healthy. So the question is, is cocoa fat unhealthy? Can it affect your heart health in the same way other saturated fats can do? Now, there is some research comparing the fat from olive oil with cocoa butter, which found very little difference on cholesterol levels, including HDL, high density lipoproteins, apoB and apoA. So in this particular piece of research, they gave people specifically cocoa butter fats and then olive oil fats, and they didn't find a significant difference between the lipid levels when they measured them afterwards. There's also a suggestion that the saturated fat stearic acid has a neutral effect on blood cholesterol. So just remember, stearic acid was one half of the saturated fats that were found in cocoa butter as well. So it doesn't raise it and it doesn't lower it, but it kind of remains a bit unclear right now. I don't believe there's too much research looking at that. I think the main point though is that we need to put everything into context. It's rare that someone will eat cocoa butter on its own. I mean, it is delicious and it's got a wonderful mouth feel, but it's, you know, it's not something that's readily available in supermarket shelves. And cocoa fats in chocolate are part again of this food matrix. It's found alongside these other health protective fibres, minerals, flavanols, all which even on their own would outweigh the risks that may be associated with saturated fats in chocolate. So remember, you can't determine the healthfulness of an ingredient based on the macronutrient composition alone. You can't just point to the fact that an ingredient has saturated fat in, ergo, it's not cardio healthy, it's not healthy for your heart, particularly when you have all this evidence to say the contrary. So, that's what I'm going to say about heart health for now. It's generally very good for your heart. We'll get to how you choose a heart healthy type of chocolate. So we've got evidence linking chocolate, good evidence linking chocolate intake to better heart health, better brain function. What about gut health? That's the third thing I think I've heard a lot more about and it's most likely going to be because of the fibre as well as the polyphenols found in cocoa beans. More and more people have been talking about the potential benefits of dark chocolate for gut health. And I welcome it. I think it's a really gut healthy ingredient to add to your daily if not weekly regime. Right now, the evidence in humans is small, but from what we found out, there is an intriguing study I want to highlight. So there was a small trial where researchers looked at the effects of dark chocolate intake on the gut microbiota and mood of 48 healthy adults. And they assigned them to eat either 30 grams of 85% dark chocolate daily, my personal favourite, 30 grams of 70% dark chocolate daily, I can deal with that, or no chocolate. I definitely can't deal with that. That was their control. And they found that those who ate 85% dark chocolate every day for three weeks showed improvements in the composition and diversity of their gut microbiome, plus positive changes in their mood scores. So mood scoring is a subjective measure of how they're feeling. But these benefits weren't seen in the 70% cocoa chocolate group. So that suggests the importance of high cocoa content to see benefits. Now, it was a small study, it's, you know, doesn't have blinding. You're going to tell the difference between having something, if you're not used to eating high cocoa containing chocolate like I am, 85% chocolate is going to feel medicinal. So there is probably going to be some placebo effect there compared to, you know, 70% chocolate that most people can can get behind. Um and that, you know, it's just, it's encouraging for future studies to examine this relationship. Um this potential benefit of the gut brain signaling following a period of dark chocolate consumption. Um and I think the extra detail about the study that is interesting is that the dose of 30 grams of 85% dark chocolate contained 400 milligrams of polyphenols per day, whilst 70% provided 250 milligrams of polyphenols per day. So almost 100% difference in the polyphenol content and obviously the no chocolate group didn't have any of that as well. So interesting study, I think there's probably more to to look into in that respect. Um but how else might it affect gut health? So you've got the obvious answer, which is the fibre and the polyphenols in the cocoa beans that can serve as food for your gut microbes via the prebiotic effect. And we know that the more prebiotics in your diet, it improves the composition of your gut. Here's where it gets interesting. A significant proportion of the flavanols in cocoa don't actually get absorbed in the small intestine. They make their way down to the colon, your large intestine, where your gut microbes work their magic and they break them down into the beneficial metabolites which then make their way into your bloodstream. And some researchers believe that these colon-derived metabolites are actually the key players behind the long-term effects of cocoa flavanols. So this is all to say that it's not the flavanols, and I'm just putting my my shot of chocolate at the screen here if you're watching. If you're not watching on YouTube, these cocoa flavanols, it might not be the flavanols. It might be the metabolites of the flavanols once they are digested by your microbes. And that lends another question because our microbes are so different, is me, is there going to be a difference between me consuming a flavanol rich drink and the potential effects on my mood, on my brain health, on my cardiac health, compared to someone else that has a completely different micro population, a completely different pattern. And this is where we we move into that world of personalized medicine, personalized nutrition, you know, optimizing certain amounts depending on the composition of our microbes. We're really, really far away from that. And I think as interesting a question it is, I don't think it's something feasible. I think we just need to pack as many of these different prebiotic rich foods into our diet as much as possible and hope for the best. And that's probably the biggest issue right now. You've heard me on this podcast talk to a number of different nutrition academics and less than 1% of the population actually eat a healthy dietary pattern. So I don't think it's about optimizing specific ingredients with um uh specific uh amounts of polyphenols. I think it's just getting polyphenols into our diet per se. What about the sugar in chocolate? You know, isn't that detrimental to our gut? So when we think of chocolate, we mostly think of a high sugar treat. You know, we think about it from a Halloween perspective, um we think about it as uh something that we give to reward behavior for children. And with all the talk about reducing our sugar intake and being aware of frequent exaggerated blood glucose responses, how can chocolate be considered healthy? Well, when you've got an 85% uh dark chocolate, the sugar content is very, very low. Um it's usually around 10 to 15 grams per 100 gram bar. And unless you're a glutton like me, you're unlikely to have a huge 100 gram bar. So the likelihood of having a significant amount of sugar in a 30 gram portion is going to be pretty low. You're looking at uh less than a teaspoon or around a teaspoon of sugar. Um so that's the first thing to say. The other thing to say is there are a few studies looking at high polyphenol dark chocolate and how it can reduce the risk of type two diabetes. So, uh a couple of large cohort studies found participants who ate dark chocolate had a lower risk of type two diabetes compared with people who rarely or never ate it. Again, the way dark chocolate could work to benefit the risk of type two diabetes and glucose metabolism lies in the content of flavanols. So in non-human studies, they've been found to activate signaling pathways, insulin signaling pathways, causing a mild increase in glucose uptake. So the body can take sugar from the blood more effectively. The most reasonable explanation is that an individual who is going to be accustomed to the bitterness and the complex flavor of dark chocolate, most likely has a healthier lifestyle, most likely understands why a dark chocolate is better than a low uh cocoa containing chocolate. So there's that healthy user effect that I think is the sort of Occam's razor, the the simplest explanation for what we see in the research uh as well. And yes, there is, you know, some benefit of inflammation and all those polyphenols and stuff. Um but overall, I think the likelihood is more people who have dark chocolate in their diet probably have a healthier lifestyle uh as well. Overall, I'm not saying that you need to start eating dark chocolate to prevent diabetes or reduce inflammation or improve your gut health. I think it's a really wonderful, uh complex ingredient that has potential uh benefits. And we need more well-designed studies, intervention studies in particular, to really understand how much dark chocolate could be beneficial uh in your diet.
Dr Rupy: Let's say by now you're convinced, you know, it's going to affect my brain, it's going to affect my heart, it's going to affect my gut in a positive way. I'm going to bookmark those scientific studies and I'm going to shift gears into everyday life. How am I going to get some dark chocolate into uh my diet every single day? So, the first thing is to recognize dark chocolate versus milk chocolate. The type of chocolate that are used in these studies is often as high as 85%. And the reason why is because of those high amounts of polyphenols and fibre and nutrients and the low amount of sugar as well. But be aware of what I refer to as fake dark chocolate. So if you've ever been to a supermarket aisle and you just read the word dark chocolate and you think, oh, that's dark chocolate, flip the pack and look at the cocoa content. It can be as low as 40 or 50%, sometimes even lower. So you really have to look at the percentage that is advertised on the front to really guarantee whether you're getting a dark chocolate or not. So that's the first thing. If you're of the opinion that if I get any chocolate into my diet, it's fine. Look, milk chocolate does contain cocoa solids. It will have flavanols, but often in very, very low amounts. So you're likely to be underdosing to get those benefits. And it also has lots of other added sugars, added dairy, additives, emulsifiers. That's something that I, you know, you're not going to get, you're not going to be able to consume enough milk chocolate to get the benefits of the flavanols uh without enduring the negative effects of the excess sugar and excess added uh ingredients. So, milk chocolate, like enjoy it, I think it's a luxury item. I still have milk chocolate every now and then, but from a health perspective, I don't think it's an uh somewhere to go. White chocolate doesn't typically contain cocoa solids. It's made of sugar, milk and cocoa butter. And like I said, cocoa butter, we're on the fence as to whether that is heart healthy or not. The best case scenario, I think is that it's uh cardio neutral in that it doesn't have a negative effect on lipoproteins and cholesterol levels, uh but certainly white chocolate will not have the benefits that we've just been talking about in terms of blood pressure, oxidative stress, uh prebiotic effects. Um it it's very unlikely to to have those benefits unfortunately. Um when I think about chocolate, I think about it uh like on a spectrum. So not all chocolate bars are created equal. We we can think about it, you know, on one side you've got um the really low flavanol containing chocolate, milk chocolate or white chocolate on one side. And on the far right, you've got dark chocolate near 100%. I mean, I've experimented with like 90 and 95%. Very, very bitter. I mean, this is pretty much 100% what I've got in front of me right now. It's very, very bitter, but you've got to work your way up. Like I went from um milk chocolate to 50 to 55%. Then I moved up to uh 70 and 75 plus and then now like I can appreciate the flavors. And the way in which I do that is by just taking small chunks of chocolate and letting it melt in my mouth and sort of like trying to pick out flavors. It's almost like a little game you can play with yourself. Uh do you taste fruits? Do you taste acidity? Do you taste tannins? Do you taste um earthy notes? Um you know, the first time you do that, it's going to taste bitter. In the same way, the first time you had a glass of red wine, it tasted awful. In the same way, the first time you had an espresso shot, it tasted, you know, burnt. Um unless you actually did taste like terrible coffee. Um but the more you develop a sense for those bitter notes, the more you develop uh an understanding of the process, the more you can appreciate um those those healthful elements uh that give so much flavor um as well as um the health benefits that we've just been talking about as well. So this is all to say that to benefit from the effects of cocoa compounds that we've just been talking about, you want regular consumption of 80 to 90% chocolate and you want to be toward the right as much as possible and reserve the stuff on the left, like your white chocolate or milk chocolate, if you enjoy those sort of things to be luxury items, not daily staples. How much? That's the other question I get a lot. How much chocolate do I need to eat to get some of the benefits? Well, the honest answer is we don't really know for sure because studies have looked at this massive range, like we mentioned that Cochrane study that looked at cocoa consumption anywhere between a gram to uh 100 grams plus uh every single day. So there's a big range of doses, there's lots of variation in the flavanol content in different dark chocolate products. So it's really, really hard. Um but, you know, using a bit of common sense, my suggestion and actually, you know, looking at examine.com, which is a trusted resource that I look at uh quite often, uh the recommendation I would say lies somewhere between 25 to 40 grams of dark chocolate per day. That's 85% plus to get a standard dose of cocoa flavanols. But in one study on cardiovascular risk, they found that the most appropriate dose of dark chocolate consumption for reducing cardiovascular uh disease was actually 45 grams per week. So, again, it just points to the ultimate answer which is, I can't know for sure, but if I want to enjoy dark chocolate, 85% every single day, I'm going to have 30 to 40 grams, that's like a a little sort of nugget of 100 gram bar. That's most likely going to provide you with the flavanols that could lead to those benefits as well. I always say like, you know, it's about moderation and variety. Some some research suggests a sweet spot where the health benefits are maximized and high levels may negate the health benefits. But dark chocolate can still give you fibre and polyphenols. There are so many other foods that can, you know, also add to that polyphenol uh consumption. Dark chocolate is just going to be one of those uh additive compounds. So look, dark chocolate can give you fibre, polyphenols, but that shouldn't negate other foods. There are so many other foods out there that have these beneficial compounds. As simple as apple, green tea, um spices. It's all about mixing up the types of foods that we eat rather than just focusing on one uh food and giving it a superfood status. So, variety, uh mixing it up, diversity in ingredients, that's good for your gut microbes as well. Try and get some variety in there. Uh another question I get is caffeine. Uh can I have chocolate at night because it's, you know, got caffeine in? Dark chocolate does naturally contain a bit of caffeine thanks to the cocoa content. But compared to a cup of coffee, the amount of caffeine in a chocolate bar is relatively small. An average chocolate bar will contain 10 milligrams of caffeine, whereas a cup of coffee or an espresso contains anywhere between 90 to 120 milligrams of caffeine. So, if you're really sensitive to caffeine, have dark chocolate only in the day, uh but otherwise, I don't think it's um much to really uh worry about. So to recap, dark chocolate that's high in cocoa content is linked to better brain function, is linked to better heart health, is gut friendly because of the flavanols and the prebiotic effects. The darker the chocolate, the more beneficial compounds. Go for dark chocolate, at least 70%, but if you can tolerate it, 85% with little to no added ingredients. Read the ingredient list because the label dark is not enough to prove that it is actually healthy as proper dark chocolate. Um and in terms of uh the amount, it's still being debated, but anywhere between 40 grams per day to 45 grams per week uh can potentially be beneficial. I'm sure I'm going to get loads more questions about chocolate in terms of the quality, the types of chocolates that we should be consuming. So leave your comments uh in the description, caption, stuff below underneath the caption. Uh we will be doing a lot more stuff on chocolate and I am also going to be doing a taste test because A, I want to find out what brands of chocolate are the best, taste the best and are at a price point that is accessible to most people as well. So you can make your decisions as to how you want to consume chocolate if you enjoy chocolate like I do as well.
Dr Rupy: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. Remember, you can support the pod by rating on Apple, follow along by hitting the subscribe button on Spotify, and you can catch all of our podcasts on YouTube if you enjoy seeing our smiley faces. Review show notes on the doctorskitchen.com website and sign up to our free weekly newsletters where we do deep dives into ingredients, the latest nutrition news, and of course, lots of recipes by subscribing to the eat, listen, read newsletter by going to the doctorskitchen.com/newsletter. And if you're looking to take your health further, why not download the Doctor's Kitchen app for free from the App Store. I will see you here next time.
