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Chocolate, Wine and Romance
Good for You and Your Love Life
By Kelly Burgess
As an example of the importance of incorporating any food into a normal diet, he tells the story of working as a consultant at a long-term care facility. He discovered that the elderly diabetics weren't getting any pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving because the house dietitians had the mindset that all sugar is bad.
"I said, wait a minute, are you telling me that you can't figure out how to incorporate half a slice of pumpkin pie into their holiday meal?" he says. "It was ridiculously strict considering the healthy recipes available for virtually everything these days. Besides, pumpkin pie isn't just an indulgence, it has fiber."
It's true – there are certain health benefits to eating chocolate. But not just any chocolate!
Dark chocolate, containing 70 percent or more cocoa solids, is the most nutritious form of chocolate. Milk and white chocolates do not contain enough cocoa from which to derive benefits. Dark chocolate is rich in magnesium, which is good for lowering blood pressure and for the cardiovascular system. It is an antioxidant, which means it helps in the destruction of free radicals that can cause major health problems. Dark chocolate also contains potassium and even calcium.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Cologne in Germany, which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirmed that eating dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure.
As for drinking alcohol, red wine is the drink of choice. Researchers at the University of California-Davis say the antioxidant resveratrol, found in red wine, is not the only thing red wine has going for it. They discovered that red wine also contains saponins, compounds that may reduce the risk of heart disease and evencancer by preventing the absorption of cholesterol.