Chocolate is probably one of the most loved desserts in the world. This magical plant discovered in the Americas quickly made its way to become a main part of all delicacies. It was previously only a sour drink consumed by the native Americans for religious purposes. The cocoa plant has been extensively researched and made into many different types of chocolate with different ingredients, nutritional benefits and value.

What is dark chocolate?

Dark chocolate is chocolate made directly from cocoa powder and cocoa butter, which is excreted from cocoa plant, without the addition of milk nor its butter. Dark chocolate typically appears with a dark brown shade and is usually harder in consistency than its milk sibling. A sweetener may be added to dark chocolate, but dark chocolate without one is called bitter chocolate.

Benefits of dark chocolate:

Dark chocolate has been proven by research that it is more than a simple delicacy, and there are several proven benefits to eating dark chocolate. The following are some of them:

1) Dark chocolate and heart disease

One of the main health benefits of dark chocolate is that it has been proven to decrease the risk of heart disease. This finding has been extensively researched with concrete proof that eating dark chocolate in modest amounts of about 1 oz per day has been associated with close to 10% decreased risk of heart attacks.

Heart attacks occur when the blood vessels supplying your heart are blocked by fat deposits. Dark chocolate contains flavonoids, which are chemicals broadly described as antioxidants. Antioxidants protect against many diseases and decrease inflammation, which is a central process in artery blockage.

Other diseases that have a similar process to heart attacks are strokes, and it is possible that it has a similar effect, but such a finding has not yet been proven by scientific research. Oxidation is the first step in the formation of plaques, plaques block blood vessels of the heart.