Chocolate for BREAKFAST?
There is a new study stating that eating chocolate for breakfast could actually have 'unexpected benefits' by helping your body burn fat.
Researchers in Boston, Massachusetts gave 100 grams of milk chocolate to 19 women within one hour after waking up and one hour before bedtime.
That is about the equivalent of two standard-sized Mars bars (58g) – although the researchers used standard milk chocolate containing 18.1g of cocoa.
The team was amazed to discover that neither morning or night time milk chocolate intake led to weight gain, probably because it acted as an appetite suppressant.
In fact, intake of milk chocolate during the morning hours was shown to help burn fat and reduce blood glucose levels.
This was most likely due to beneficial chemicals called flavanols found naturally in cocoa that increase fat oxidation.
'Our results show that chocolate reduced ad libitum energy intake, consistent with the observed reduction in hunger, appetite and the desire for sweets shown in previous studies.'
The study is especially surprising because it used milk chocolate, which has a reputation for contributing to weight gain due to its high fat, sugar and caloric content.
COCOA CAN BOOST OXYGEN LEVELS IN THE BRAIN
Drinking cocoa can increase your mental agility thanks to the presence of flavanols – chemicals that are abundant in cocoa beans.
UK and US researchers found healthy adults performed better on difficult cognitive tasks if the participants had consumed a cocoa drink containing high levels of flavanols.
After drinking flavanol-rich cocoa, participants produced a faster and greater increase in blood oxygenation in the frontal cortex – a brain region that plays a key role in cognition and decision-making – that helped them complete these tasks.
Flavanols are antioxidants and are abundant in tea, red wine, blueberries, apples, pears, cherries, and peanuts, as well as in the seeds of the cacao tree – cocoa beans.
