SECRET 9: INDULGE IN THE RIGHT VICES
The Promise
In three weeks of making this change, you will:
notice a reduction in cravings
In six months, you will:
drop a few pounds
have an easier time sticking with your weight-loss plans
feel more relaxed and your cravings will be mild, if at all
In one year, you will:
be in control of your vices and cravings
lower your risk for diseases, such as heart disease, cancer and dementia
Vices. We all have them. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t! Some vices are just plain naughty, like smoking, which is a death sentence at almost any dose. Other vices, such as drinking alcohol, gambling or eating sweets, straddle the fence between naughty and nice, depending on how often and how much we indulge. A few vices, like red wine, tea and chocolate, are actually mood-boosting, waist-thinning, disease-preventing, life-extending wonders—as long as we stay within limits.
The “vice” of food cravings is not a sign of a split personality or even a lack of willpower. You aren’t a bad person because you can’t keep your hands out of the cookie jar or spoon out of the ice cream. More often than not, those cravings are fueled by a whole symphony of brain chemicals; other times it’s just a habit—one that is easily tamed.
Fantastic Voyage
Vices aren’t just learned, they are hardwired into your head. Serotonin, endorphins, neuropeptide Y (NPY), galanin and corticosterone might sound like characters from Star Wars, but they are some of the many microscopic chemicals at the helm of your craving control.
Some of these nerve chemicals originate from the brain’s appetite control tower, the hypothalamus. Others are produced in satellite relay stations, such as the digestive tract, pancreas or the adrenal glands, that send detailed messages to the brain. Some switch on the desire to eat sweet or fatty foods; others tell us when to stop. Each of us rides the ebb and flow of these chemicals.
The most famous of all brain chemicals is serotonin, which, when levels get low in the brain, turns on a craving for carbs and drops mood into the blue-and-gloomy range. Give in to the craving by eating a piece of pie or an oatmeal cookie and the brain rapidly makes more serotonin, which then triggers a better mood and a drop in cravings. That’s why so many people return over and over again to sweets to feel good. Winnie, a government worker in Milwaukee, says, “My best friend is a Cinnabon roll. I can always count on it to brighten my day when I’m feeling sorry for myself.” Too bad that roll also has 730 calories, enough to explain why Winnie gained 15 pounds in one year.
But that’s just one of many chemicals coursing through your brain and body sending subtle, unconscious reminders that you deserve another chip or would feel so much better if you just had a chocolate Kiss. NPY tells you to include carbs at breakfast. By lunch, a brain chemical called galanin is telling you to eat fattier fare. During times of stress, it might be the endorphins released into your brain telling you that something sweet and creamy right now sure would taste good. These nerve chemicals are ebbing and flowing throughout the day, throughout the month and even throughout the year, leading to cravings for salty popcorn during the winter months, ice cream just before a woman’s period and pancakes for breakfast year-round.
The Natural High
Indulging in small amounts of good vices can keep you on the diet track and even boost your mood while losing weight.
A Closer Look at the Sweet and Creamies
Sweets mean sugar, right? Not always. In fact, most sweets are more fat than carbs. Our favorite vices typically are a combination of sugar and fat. We are after the sweet, but it is the fat that draws us in and can add inches to our waistlines. For example, well over 50% of the calories in most ice creams and 40% or more of the calories in a chocolate chip cookie come from fat, not sugar.
Fat alone is unpalatable—who craves a big glob of lard? But add even a little sugar and it becomes a sweet-and-creamy combination that brings out the craving in even the most ardent dieter. Sugar makes fat taste good and even masks its presence in foods. When people taste foods containing various amounts of sugar and fat, their perception of the fat content decreases as the sugar content increases; the sweeter the treat, the more we don’t taste the fat. Sugar makes the fat invisible. Consequently, people often have no idea how much fat they are eating and unjustly accuse only sugar of prompting the uncontrollable urge to eat—and the spare tire around the middle.
Serotonin definitely leads us to crave sweets, but don’t put all the blame on serotonin for your sweet-and-creamy cravings. More likely, it is serotonin working in concert with endorphins—natural morphinelike substances in the brain—that produce euphoric or pleasurable feelings whenever you take a bite of whipped cream–topped pie or a hot fudge sundae. Both sugar and fat release endorphins in the brain and produce a natural painkilling effect. In fact, the very taste of sugar on the tongue releases endorphins in the brain. That means that you start feeling happy as soon as something sweet hits your tongue. No wonder chocolate, the ultimate melt-in-your-mouth combination of fat and sugar, is the number one most craved food.
Basic Instincts
The desire to eat forbidden fruits, from Indian fry bread to Ben & Jerry’s, might spring from an even deeper internal well than a craving for pleasure or even a relief from depression or boredom.
It is no coincidence that the appetite control center in the brain is next door to the reproductive center, which leads many researchers to suspect that the cycle of fat and sugar cravings coincides with reproductive needs, otherwise known as the survival of the species instinct.
Your most basic driving force is to survive, and nothing is more important to that drive than making sure the body has enough to eat. It’s no surprise that all the appetite control chemicals in the brain turn on cravings for high-calorie sweets and grease; there are no brain chemicals—not one—that whisper in your inner ear to eat broccoli or wheat germ (unless the broccoli is battered and fried or the wheat germ is disguised in cookie batter!). Sweet and greasy foods were rare on the savannah during most of our ancient ancestor’s Stone Age lives. Over millions of years, these ancestors evolved complicated brain chemistry to ensure they ate anything with lots of calories whenever it happened to show up, just to make sure they survived the next famine.
Perhaps that very basic survival drive explains why women battle more cravings than do men and are more likely to crave sweetened fats, especially during puberty and following ovulation. Cravings are the body’s way of making sure that women’s hips have packed on ample calories to get them through pregnancy, birthing and nursing the next generation. Men, on the other hand, typically prefer protein fats, such as meat dishes, perhaps as a survival instinct that ensures they have the muscle and fortitude to bring home the bacon (or bison, as the case may be) for their families.
Stress adds to the craving equation. Everything from boredom to anxiety can set off a craving attack. Interestingly, the stress hormones, such as norepinephrine (a cousin to adrenaline) and corticosterone, both made and released from the adrenal glands during stress, raise brain levels of appetite control chemicals, which in turn increase food cravings, overeating and weight gain. Which makes sense from a survival-of-the-fittest perspective.
Of course, these survival skills and the cravings they trigger don’t suit our modern-day madness, where sweet and greasy treats have gone from few to frequent and tigers have been replaced with deadlines. But our bodies are identical to our ancestors’ cave-dweller bodies, and those bodies evolved to literally kill for a cookie (or anything high in fat, sugar and calories).
Work with Them, Not Against Them
You can’t will away food cravings; they are part of the human package. Restrictive diets or even very low-fat or carb-free diets disrupt this natural cycle of nerve chemicals. These nerve chemicals go totally berserk when people go on quick-weight loss diets, since those diets try to force our appetites to go against everything they evolved to do. The more a person diets, the more out of control the cravings.
People who repeatedly gain and lose weight on fad diets also crave sweet-fat foods more than do people who lose weight sensibly and for good. It is likely that restricting these foods raises some appetite chemicals and lowers others, which sets up a rebound effect and swings the eating pendulum from abstinence to binge. You can’t get mad at those chemicals, they are only doing their job—ensuring you stay alive.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving you license to binge on junk. You must find a happy medium between including a few vices in your day without those cravings running your life and jeopardizing your waistline or your health. The secret to being happier and skinnier is to work with your appetite control chemicals, not against them. Ask any happy person who has maintained a desirable weight for any length of time and you’ll find that most, if not all of them, indulge their vices now and then.
10 Steps to Crave Control
Whatever the cause, the only solution is to work with the cravings, not try to will them away. Happy, fit people have different ways of doing this:
Darlene, the teacher in Albuquerque, found she could keep her sugar cravings at bay by eating protein: “I pack string cheese sticks in my purse or briefcase or toss a handful of peanuts into my mouth whenever I’m hit with the urge to snack. That usually is all it takes to calm the craving storm.”
Rainey, a speaker’s bureau consultant in Washington, D.C., follows the “if…then” rule. “My philosophy is that if I want a glass of red wine (which I usually do these days), then I will not have anything white that day, like white bread or rice.” She’s also found that having a big bowl of fruit after dinner helps curb her sweet tooth and keeps her out of the ice cream.
Reka, who works at a publishing house in New York, says, “When it comes to vices, I like them all—sweet, salty, greasy, you name it. What I’ve found that works for me when a craving hits is to put a big bowl of baby carrots on my desk at work. It gives me something to crunch on and I can eat as many as I want without feeling guilty.”
Diet is not shaped by food cravings alone. Along with that ancient brain telling you to eat sweets and fat, you have a higher brain, called the cortex, that can keep you on track dietwise. Eating right means engaging that cortex to adopt a willing attitude and a bit of up-front planning.
Controlling your vices begins with 10 simple steps:
1. Eat regularly. You stay in control of your appetite and cravings if you eat frequently, starting with breakfast. You stay in control of your cravings when you are comfortably hungry. Let more than four hours go by between meals or snacks and you could be too hungry to make smart decisions. Now your cravings control you, setting the stage for an out-of-control binge.
2. Ride the wave. Just because you have a hankering for a bag of corn chips doesn’t mean you give in to the craving immediately. Make a rule that you will ride the crave wave for at least 20 minutes, then if you still want the chip, have it. Or tell yourself you’ll have that snack tomorrow. Often telling yourself you can have something “later,” rather than “never,” is enough to soothe the urge.
While you are riding the crave wave, try chewing gum. Studies show that popping a stick of gum in your mouth can reduce cravings, suppress appetite, reduce your desire for sweets and help you cut back on snacking.
3. Plan your cravings. Set aside a calorie allotment to accommodate a small indulgence a few times a week. Then have whatever you want, just limit it to three bites. That’s all it takes to satisfy your brain chemistry. Besides, research shows that the most enjoyment comes in the first bite. Each subsequent bite becomes less and less enjoyable and more and more like a binge.
4. Out of sight. Hide your temptations, if you bring them into the house at all. Out of sight often really does mean out of mind.
5. Repackage it. Overdoing it is easy when you eat straight from the bag of chips or carton of ice cream. Portion dry snacks into 1-ounce servings and place in baggies. Scoop the recommended half-cup serving of ice cream into a bowl and put the carton back in the freezer before eating it. Susan, a mother and executive in Southern California, learned to satisfy her cravings with a small bite of something sweet after every meal. “I’ve always craved something sweet after lunch and dinner. So I made myself a bargain. I could have two Milk Duds or one piece of licorice after every lunch and dinner. That satisfies the craving. Any more than that, and I feel terrible, probably from guilt.” Hey, if you’re going to feel guilty, why not use it in your favor?
6. Find a better way. Find a healthier option for each craving. Need something crunchy and creamy? Try dunking baby carrots in peanut butter. Need a sweet, crunchy alternative to a Snickers bar? Try dates stuff ed with almonds. Is sweet and creamy your weakness? Try custard-style yogurt topped with a dollop of light whipped cream.
7. You deserve the best. Don’t “waist” your calories on low-quality sweets. Skip the boxed cookies, the commercial doughnuts and the cheap candy bars. Instead, when you decide to indulge, pick the best of the best. A small piece of high-quality chocolate will satisfy you far more than a pound of junk.
8. Keep a journal. For one week, write down everything you eat and how you feel before and after. You might find that certain emotions, people, places or events trigger cravings. Once you figure out the link, it’s easy to find a solution.
9. Is it only a habit? Often we program ourselves to crave a food. Have a bite of chocolate after lunch, and before you know it, you must have chocolate after every meal. Habits are learned, so they can be unlearned. In this case, develop a new habit that provides the same pleasurable or rewarding effect. For example, take a brisk walk, shoot baskets, call a friend, paint your nails or take a hot bath during that craving-prone time of the day.
10. Get moving. People who are physically active are less prone to bingeing and cravings and maintain a more constant weight as compared to couch potatoes. Exercise also is a healthy way to get a pleasurable endorphin rush and reduce stress. The best part is that when you exercise daily and vigorously, you can indulge a little more in your vices! Understanding that food cravings are fueled not just by personality, but by a stew of nerve chemicals and hormones takes the guilt out of cravings and helps you work with and listen to your body. Besides, some vices are good for us. We need a little decadence in our lives to boost our spirits and tantalize our tastebuds. More important, some vices actually lower disease risk, extend the healthy years and even improve mood, memory and weight. If you are going to indulge, do it with a delicious treat that makes you happy and smart, like tea, wine or chocolate. All three of these foods have one thing in common—they are extracts, which are condensed versions of antioxidant-rich plants. It makes sense that they are absolutely good-for-you vices.
30 Indulgences That Will Soothe Any Craving
1. Mango Parfait: Layer cubes of mango, grated lemon zest and Rachel’s Orange Strawberry Mango yogurt in a parfait glass. Top with a dollop of light whipped cream.
2. Angel Food Cake à la Blueberries: In a saucepan, heat 1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen) with 1 tablespoon sugar or Splenda and 1 tablespoon cornstarch until sauce thickens. Let cool. Top a slice of angel food cake with the sauce.
3. Grilled Pineapple: Spray grill with cooking spray. Brush strips of fresh pineapple with rum and place on grill. Grill on each side until heated through, about three minutes per side. Top with toasted sweetened coconut.
4. Poached Pear in Chocolate Lavender Sauce: See recipe in Recipes section.
5. Mini Chocolate Cream Pies: Fill mini phyllo shells with cooled chocolate pudding (made with low-fat milk). Top with a dollop of fat-free whipped cream.
6. Ice Cream Sandwiches: Soften Breyer’s Nonfat Double Churn-free Cappuccino Chocolate Chunk ice cream. Place a tablespoon between two chocolate wafers.
7. Chocolate Fondue: Melt semisweet chocolate pieces. Lightly dunk 1 cup fresh whole strawberries in the sauce.
8. Fruit Kabobs: Marinate nectarine or peach halves in lime juice, honey and concentrated orange juice. Thread skewers through fruit and grill.
9. Trail Mix: Mix equal parts tart dried cherries, almonds and semisweet chocolate chips. Limit serving to 2 ounces.
10. Chewy, Crunchy, Super Chocolatey Clusters: See recipe in Recipes section. Eat just one a day.
11. Berry Cream: Toss fresh berries with vanilla sugar. Place in wineglasses and top with a dollop of nonfat sour cream.
12. Baked Apple: Cut off the top of an apple and core. Sprinkle walnuts and brown sugar on top and bake at 375 degrees until tender, approximately 45 minutes.
13. Sweet ’n’ Creamy: Top Rachel’s Pink Grapefruit Lychee yogurt with blueberries.
14. Bobbing for Apples: Dunk apple slices in caramel sauce.
15. Pineapple Coconut Smoothie: See recipe in Recipes section.
16. A Glass of Chocolate Satin: Chocolate soy milk goes a long way to satisfying a chocolate craving!
17. Cherry Jubilee: Warm pitted cherries in the microwave and top with fat-free ricotta cheese and slivered almonds. Sprinkle with nutmeg.
18. My Oh My Clementine: Peel and section two clementine oranges. Top with warmed honey, crystalline ginger and ground cardamom.
19. Chocolate Mousse: Yoplait Whips Chocolate Mousse Style Yogurt topped with a sprinkling of semisweet chocolate chips and a dollop of fat-free whipped topping.
20. Mango-Pineapple Crush: See recipe in Recipes section.
21. Sweet Cheeses: Top graham crackers with fat-free ricotta cheese and strawberry jam or orange marmalade.
22. Instant Pudding: Top one prepared low-fat vanilla pudding snack cup with chopped pecans and diced dried apricots.
23. Minty Fruit Sundae: Blend nonfat plain yogurt with chopped fresh mint, vanilla extract and a touch of sugar. Pour over fresh fruit.
24. Fooled Ya Ambrosia: Mix pineapple chunks, banana slices, drained canned mandarin orange slices, nonfat vanilla yogurt, minimarshmallows and chopped walnuts in a bowl.
25. Creamy, Spicy Crackers: Top 100% whole-grain crackers with fat-free cream cheese and a dollop of jelly, such as red pepper jelly.
26. Dessert on Toast: Top a piece of whole-wheat toast with a thin smear of peanut butter, fat-free cottage cheese and drained crushed pineapple.
27. Cookie Crumble: Crush chocolate wafers and sprinkle over fat-free ricotta cheese.
28. Spicy Chocolate Bruschetta: Toast thin slices of a French baguette loaf. Melt semisweet chocolate with a touch of cayenne pepper in a pan. Top each slice with a little melted chocolate and orange shavings.
29. Berry Frozen Yogurt Pie: Soften a half gallon of fat-free vanilla frozen yogurt. Spoon into a graham cracker pie crust. Place in freezer until firm. Top each slice with ½ cup berries.
30. Sweet Fruit McMuffins: Cut a leftover dinner biscuit in half. Fill with fat-free sour cream and a teaspoon of jam. Top with fresh fruit.
The Tea Diet
There are only two ways to lose weight. You either 1. burn more calories or 2. eat fewer of them. Tea might help you do both.
First, compounds in tea called catechins rev metabolism and spark fat burning, so you burn more calories. Those calories are most likely to be fat calories from around your belly, hips and thighs. A few cups of tea each day raise your metabolism enough to burn about 80 extra calories. While it doesn’t sound like much, over the course of a year that could mean up to an 8-pound loss, and all you did was sip on cups of tea! (Of course, that calorie advantage is shot if you more than make up the difference by eating more cookies.)
Second, a few studies show that drinking tea helps curb appetite, so you eat less. Maybe tea curbs your desire to gorge because drinking it gives you something to do, so you are less likely to circle the kitchen like a vulture, nibbling on everything from leftover Chinese take-out to crackers, cream cheese and pickles. Or it could be that tea’s magic combination of caffeine and catechins, especially one called EGCG (which stands for epigallocatechin) is a one-two punch to your appetite-suppressing center.
Tea Time for Your Mood
As if being a natural diet aid wasn’t enough, tea also has all the same benefits as coffee on your mood, without the downside of caffeine jitters. Since it has half the caffeine of coffee, or about 40 milligrams per cup (depending on how dark you like your brew), tea helps lift your spirits, speed thought processes and keep you energized but is less likely to interfere with a good night’s sleep. Tea also helps soothe jangled nerves and lower stress. One study of healthy men found that those who drank tea had lower stress hormone levels and were more relaxed even when under pressure.
The Chinese believe that tea promotes health and longevity. They might be right. Tea is a gold mine of antioxidants that repair damaged cells in the brain and body. Other compounds in tea help relax arteries to encourage blood flow, reduce blood clots and prevent inflammation. The antioxidant load is so high in tea that when researchers at Tufts University compared it to antioxidants in 22 vegetables, tea came out on top as the best source of these cell-protecting compounds, with antioxidants that are more powerful than vitamin C, vitamin E or beta-carotene.
Improved blood flow and high antioxidants are the perfect combination for supplying oxygen and nutrients to your brain while protecting that delicate tissue from aging. No wonder people who drink tea are least likely to develop memory loss. The more tea they drink, the lower their risk for dementia. They also lower their risks for heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis and kidney stones.
Tea Rules
Green tea has received the most attention in the news when it comes to health and dieting. In reality, green, red (oolong), white and black teas all come from the same plant, whether it’s grown in South America, Africa or Turkey. Granted, the leaves of green, red and black teas are processed differently and, yes, green tea has a ton of antioxidants, but so do red and black teas. White tea contains more of the buds and fewer of the leaves, but is still rich in antioxidants. Herb tea, on the other hand, has no relation to regular tea—the two come from totally different plants with totally different tastes, aromas and health benefits.
How much do you need? Ask an Irishman, and he might say to steep your tea until it is “strong enough for a mouse to trot on.” That’s probably overkill, especially for the mouse. A more reasonable goal is two to five cups a day, steeped for three to five minutes each. That gives you the antioxidant equivalent of one to two servings of vegetables (without all the healthy fiber, vitamins and minerals, of course). You get the biggest health benefits when you drink tea throughout life, not just for a few days.
Thinking about buying your tea premade? Big mistake. Bottled teas are basically just sugar water. All or almost all the antioxidants in the original tea are lost during processing and storage, since glass bottles expose the sensitive chemicals in tea, called flavonoids, to light. Instant powdered teas aren’t much better and the process of decaff einating teas destroys at least some of the antioxidants. Don’t waste your money on tea extracts, pills or tablets, either.
Your best bet is also the cheapest—brew tea at home. Or get creative and try including tea in cooking, such as adding tea leaves or brew to rice puddings, homemade ice cream, scones or the Nutty Green Tea Rice in the Recipes section.
Grape Expectations
“I can’t imagine life without wine,” says Jeanette, a nurse in Salem, Oregon. “It is the one vice I’m totally not willing to give up. I don’t care whether it’s good, bad or indifferent to my health and waistline.” Good thing Jeanette’s chosen the right vice. This one is a great big plus for health—that is, when enjoyed in moderation.
Wine, red wine in particular, is like the proverbial apple a day in keeping the doctor away. It contains a slew of health-boosting, antioxidant-rich compounds, such as phenols, flavonoids, ergothionine and resveratrol, that protects arteries from inflammation and damage, lower heart disease risk and even prevent strokes and heart attacks. Wine and its stew of antioxidants also might lower the risk for dementia and even extend life. One study found that people who drank a moderate amount of wine were 40% less likely to become forgetful as they aged compared to teetotalers, while those drinking hard liquor increased their dementia risk.
What about white wine, is it good for you, too? Red wine contains at least 20 times the antioxidants of white wine (that’s because the antioxidants are in the grape skin and red wine is processed with the skins, while white wine isn’t). But white wine does have its virtues. White wine might improve your health, according to a study from the State University of New York, where researchers found that white wine, not red, improved breathing and lung function in a group of 1,555 adults. Lung function is a strong predictor of heart health, so toast to your lung and heart with a glass of Chablis!
As discussed in Chapter 8, you need to use some common sense when it comes to drinking any alcohol. All those antioxidants will do little for your mental health if you’re rotting your liver with the toxic effects of too much alcohol. Women should limit their intake to one glass of wine, and men should cut themselves off at two glasses a day.
Wine Rules
For some of us, like Jeanette, life just isn’t worth living without a vice or two, like a glass of wine or a nibble of chocolate. You also can make the vice work for you, your waistline and your mood, like Nancy, a freelance writer in Los Angeles, did:
“I joined Weight Watchers to relearn how to eat well. I’m on the Flex Plan, the one where you count your daily food points. The idea is to eat as much food as possible for the lowest possible points, which means lots of veggies. One thing that I must have, even though it amounts to 20% of my daily 20 points, is my nightly cocktail. Sorry, I just refuse to give it up. So, I gave up grains at dinnertime and now eat huge platefuls (I mean seriously huge, sometimes taking up the entire plate) of zero-point veggies and protein (shrimp, chicken, hamburger patty, whatever), just so I can have my predinner four-point cocktail. At the meeting today, I learned that I’ve lost 5 pounds in three weeks. Who says drinking can’t work on a weight-loss plan?!”
A glass of wine several times a week is fine. But if you drink more like two glasses a day or you drink your week’s quota over the weekend, then you need to take a hard look at how this little vice is influencing your mood, weight and health.
Moderation is the key, as is the size of that drink. The official “one drink” a day is 5 ounces of wine. The health benefits of wine or other alcoholic beverages also come from when, as well as how much, you drink. Wine goes from a health drink to a health problem after any more than six drinks a week for women. That is six drinks spread over six days, not gulped all at once during Friday night’s happy hour. You can’t drink your week’s allotment of wine on Saturday and get the same health benefits as you would from one drink consumed daily. Besides, chug a bottle of Merlot and you’ve downed 500 to 600 calories, that’s the equivalent of two Big Macs!
Just as you should eat slowly and mindfully, you also should develop the habit of drinking slowly. It takes the liver one to two hours to detoxify the alcohol in one drink. Drink any faster than that and alcohol accumulates in the blood and tissues. The buzz you feel means you are saturating your brain and tissues with the toxic effects of alcohol—you now have passed the point of reaping any of the health benefits of wine. Instead, follow the drinking rules laid out in Chapter 8.
Mmmmmm, Chocolate!
I’m a lifelong, hard-core chocoholic. I cannot think of a time when the sight or aroma of chocolate didn’t leave my knees weak. My dad turned me onto rocky road candy in the early years, followed by my sister’s divine chocolate chip cookies in my teens. While living in the dorms my freshman year of college, I polished off a 5-pound box of See’s candy in a record three days.
You can imagine my relief when studies in the 1990s from the University of California at Davis, Harvard, and other respectable institutions found that chocolate isn’t just a mood booster, an excuse to celebrate, a treat and a melt-in-your-mouth moment of ecstasy, it also is a powerhouse of antioxidants with the potential to lower heart disease, blood pressure and possibly cancer and diabetes. And get this one—it might even help you look younger and think faster! I was so thrilled to hear the news, I went right to the cupboard and celebrated with a Dove bar.
Our ancient ancestors would hardly be surprised at these findings, since chocolate originated hundreds of years ago as a medicinal plant. Chocolate’s botanical name is Theobroma cacao, which roughly translates to “food of the gods.” That title comes not just because chocolate has an incredibly pleasurable taste, but also because it was used first by the Aztecs and then later in Europe to treat hundreds of ailments from apathy and poor digestion to fertility and sexual prowess. (Casanova is said to have chosen chocolate over champagne as his aphrodisiac of choice, and Montezuma’s household devoured 2,000 jars of chocolate a day!)
Of course, not all chocolate is created equal. Some is literally packed with health-enhancing antioxidants while other kinds are just packages of fat and sugar.
Getting to Know Chocolate
Chocolate comes from cacao beans, which are roasted, fermented and then crushed into a liquid called chocolate liquor. This liquor is pressed to separate out the fat (cocoa butter), leaving a cocoa “cake” or solid that is ground into cocoa powder. This powder contains powerful antioxidants, flavonoids such as procyanidins, epicatechins and catechins. These are the same compounds found in green tea and red wine that deactivate the cell-damaging oxygen fragments called free radicals.
Cocoa powder outranks just about any food studied when it comes to these antioxidants. The level of antioxidants can be measured in any food by a test called Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity (ORAC). According to Ronald Prior, Ph.D., at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, “A serving of dark chocolate measures 9,000 units on the ORAC scale, compared to an average of about 2,000 units found in typical servings of fruits or vegetables.” That explains why a study from the University of Scranton found that chocolate contained more flavonoids than 23 different vegetables and several fruits. Other studies note that some chocolate has four times the level of catechins than does black tea. It is these phytonutrients that raise chocolate from pure pleasure to health protector. (See Chapter 5 for more about ORAC.)
Chocolate for Your Heart
As chocolate intake goes up, heart disease risk goes down. People who consume chocolate on a regular basis have almost a 20% lower risk for heart disease. The flavonoids in chocolate act much like aspirin to thin the blood and reduce the risk for deadly clots. They reduce inflammation of the artery walls associated with atherosclerosis and protect LDLs, the bad cholesterol, from being damaged by free radicals, which would make them sticky and more apt to clog arteries. Chocolate eaters also have higher levels of the good cholesterol, the HDLs. In short, feed people chocolate and their blood levels of antioxidants rise, their arteries become more elastic, their blood clots dissolve and their risk for heart disease drops. Just two weeks of including a snack-size chocolate bar (think Halloween candy) in the daily diet is enough to note improvements in antioxidant levels and artery function.
Chocolate also lowers blood pressure. The flavonoids in cocoa have a relaxing effect on blood vessels, likely because they increase the production of nitric oxide, which dilates arteries. As a result, blood vessels are more elastic and efficient at regulating blood pressure. Which explains why the more chocolate people consume, the lower their blood pressure. In fact, chocolate lovers have a 50% lower risk for dying from heart disease and a 47% lower risk for dying prematurely from any cause compared to chocolate abstainers.
Eat Chocolate: Look and Think Younger
The antioxidants in chocolate also might help you look younger, since they protect the skin from the damaging effects of sunshine. One study found that women who consumed drinks containing cocoa powder every day for three months had increased blood flow to the skin and 25% less sun damage associated with premature wrinkling, sunburn and skin cancer. The flavonols in cocoa increase blood flow to the brain, too. This might help send extra oxygen to brain tissue, which would improve mental performance.
A 5-Pound Box of Candy?
I have not set the best example with some of my past chocolate transgressions, like that 5-pound box of candy in the dorms. Granted, studies have found that the more cocoa powder people eat, the lower their disease risk. But there is a limit, typically set at about 1 ounce of dark chocolate several times a week.
“Chocolate can certainly be included in a healthy diet, but I wouldn’t call it a health food,” says Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., Director of the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. A dark chocolate bar has the same amount of antioxidants as a cup of green tea, but the tea is calorie-free while the chocolate has more than 200 calories. Nibble one of those 3.5-ounce chocolate bars hawked at movie theaters and you’ve downed more than 500 calories.
The health benefits of chocolate begin to pale when compared to the wealth of vitamins, minerals, fiber, phytonutrients and more you get in broccoli, blueberries and other super mood foods. Besides, you won’t control diabetes, heart disease or hypertension if you’re packing on the pounds. That 5-pound box of chocolate I devoured totaled 11,520 calories. It took me a month to lose the more than 3 pounds I gained in those three days. No single food is the cause of the obesity epidemic, but anything that is as calorie-dense and delicious as chocolate is easy to overconsume.
Shopping Tips
Not everything chocolate deserves applause. In fact, many cheap chocolate candies have little or no health-redeeming benefits.
Steer clear of the chocolate creams: that’s not cocoa butter inside those cream-filled centers, it is artery-clogging cream. The same goes for chocolate ice cream. Milk chocolate is a waste of time, at least in terms of the health and antioxidant value. On the other hand, the more cocoa powder in a chocolate bar, the higher the antioxidants and the better for you. No cocoa powder, no antioxidants.
Chocolate bars don’t always list the antioxidant or cocoa content, so how do you know which bar to choose? In general, the darker the bar, the more cocoa. The one exception: the alkalizing salts used in Dutch-processed cocoa destroy flavonoids, cutting the total to half the original amount. In all other chocolates made from cocoa, the flavonoid content from highest to lowest, according to a recent study from Cornell University, is: cocoa powder, bittersweet baking chocolate, then dark chocolate, followed by baking chips. Milk chocolate contains about one-tenth the flavonoids of cocoa powder, since the cocoa has been diluted with sugar and milk. White chocolate, which contains no cocoa, has none.
When a bar does list the cocoa powder, choose products with at least 60% cocoa content, preferably 70% or more. Brands to look for include Lindt, El Rey, Scharff en Berger, Lake Champlain and Ghirardelli. Any chocolate bar with “Cocoapro” on the label also contains antioxidants, since these products use a patented process that protects the flavonoid content from being destroyed during processing.
How do you limit intake to a healthy serving of 1 to 2 ounces a few times a week without overindulging?
Include a small amount of high-quality dark chocolate with meals or soon after. You’re less likely to binge that way.
Buy individually wrapped pieces, so it’s portioned for you ahead of time.
Use cocoa powder as the base of your chocolate treats, since it has no cocoa butter and is low in calories, yet packed with antioxidants.
Every chocoholic knows that abstinence does not work. Nothing satisfies a chocolate craving except chocolate. Plan guilt-free little indulgences throughout the week, and revel in all the good you are doing for your heart and health.
The Ultimate Cure for Cravings
Cravings might be hardwired into our brains, but that doesn’t mean they are set in concrete. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have had people tell me they were totally powerless to a craving, yet found by making a few other changes in their diets that those cravings miraculously vanished.
Susan was a participant in one of my classes years ago when I was doing research for my book The Origin Diet. She confessed to me at the start of the program that she would try to follow my diet guidelines, but she had to have her can of cola every afternoon. It was a vice she refused to give up. I told her that was fine, just to follow the diet guidelines as closely as possible. By the second week of being on the diet, Susan was amazed to find she no longer needed her daily soda pop: “I can’t believe that I only had one cola this week, and I didn’t even really think about it. My other cravings, like for cheese, are pretty much gone, too!”
Natalie, another participant in one of my classes, was addicted to chocolate. But after following my advice to eat a small, nutritious breakfast and to bring healthful snacks with her every day, she found she no longer needed the chocolate. Natalie decided to keep chocolate in her weekly plan, even though the cravings had stopped. “Now I have a little piece sometimes, not because I have to, but because I want to,” she says. “It’s a big difference and I feel so much more in control.”