Chocolate is good for you!

Well, I remember doing the research on chocolates for my website and found out quite a lot about its pros which more than outweigh its cons but the latest news about it really takes the cake!

Another study has confirmed that dark chocolate bars reduce cholesterol levels and improve blood pressure! This is thanks to the plant sterols and cocoa flavanols that dark chocolate bars contained.

The study was conducted by researchers from University of Illinois and Mars they have found that the daily consumption of dark chocolate bars improves blood pressure and regulates cholesterol levels. It seemed that the study was conducted on around 50 men and women with high cholesterol levels.

They get to eat flavanol-rich dark chocolate bars every day for a week, combined with a balanced, low fat diet…yummy…I don’t mind becoming one of them though! It seems that a healthy chocolate diet do help after all!

Anyway the result of this experiment showed that their bad cholesterol has decreased by 5.3% while their total cholesterol went down by 2%. Additionally, their blood pressure reduced by 5% after two months.

So, all those diet freaks intent on telling us chocolate lovers to stay away from chocolates, chew on this instead! Eating dark chocolates everyday  is actually good for you! Well, according to the study,anyway.

Keeping fit!

Recently, I started a new healthy lifestyle program and changed most of my meal plans. Thus, my delay in posting the Chocolate Diet Day 4 and Day 5. I had to re-adjust some things to be able to fit in the chocolate consumption.

However, it is not easy. You see, I am trying to lose weight here and have even taken up a losing weight challenge and joined a fit and healthy eating club for mothers. The club is known as Club Fit Yummy Mummy and it is not exactly a diet program but more of a lifestyle change for a healthier one.

If you’ve been a constant dieter like I am, you’d know the drill. Healthy choices means less sugar, less processed food, less unhealthy stuffs, more vegetables, more fruits, more healthy proteins and complex carbs. I have been choosing to eat this way for quite a while, the only exception being chocolates.

Though my own personalised Chocolate Diets worked in maintaining my weight, it didn’t help much if I wanted to lose a few more inches off every jiggly part of my body. So, I went around looking for a suitable program which I could adopt for life and not worry about gaining an inch even as I continue to indulge in my chocolates.

It may sound next to impossible to lose weight while still keeping my cravings for chocs satisfied but try I definitely will! So, I am off to my journey of discovery and hopefully I will have something positive to report soon.

My chocolate reviews

Remember the Japanese Chocolate I mentioned in the previous post?

Well, I enjoyed each and every wonderful morsel that I decided to do a review of the chocolates and put it up in my website. Did I mention how incredible it all tasted? Well, I’m going to say again that it was indeed lipsmackingly delicious!

So, if you are really curious and wants all the saliva-inducing details and my ratings for the chocolates, go on over to My Chocolate Reviews. You will find that I have reviewed other types of chocolate too. It is my goal to review as many type of chocolates as I could encounter so the site will definitely be updated regularly.

I know I have been irregular here and I have yet to post the rest of the Chocolate Diet meal and exercise plans but I am getting there. Have some patience and your patience will be rewarded. In the meantime, why not have a break, have a Kit Kat? ;-D

Easy Healthy Non-bake Chocolate Brownie

This is a recipe I got from Tracy of FYM. I thought I’d share it with fellow choc lovers looking out for a healthy, natural and easy brownie recipe. Just remember the credit goes to Tracy!

Ingredients

1 cup walnuts
1 cup dates
1/4 cup cacao powder or raw carob powder

Instructions

Place in food processor, and blend until well blended, should still be dry and chunky. (blend about 30 seconds)

Press into a small pan. Frost with frosting if you choose.

Refrigerate until you can insert a knife and it isn’t too sticky.

Cut into pieces. If you like, you can freeze these or keep them in the refrigerator.

Note: Cacao powder is the raw form of cocoa powder. If you want them to be all raw use raw cacao powder or raw carob powder. You can get these at health food stores. If you aren’t used to carob you might want to stick with cacao powder. If you don’t like that it is all raw then you can use organic cocoa powder.

Seems simple enough and you can make your own chocolate frosting to go with it if you want to. I am sure it tastes as good as the sinful version of brownie!

For more chocolate recipes and information on chocolate, remember to check out www.cocoa-chocolate.com

Japanese chocolate

When it comes to chocolate, we often talk about Belgian chocolate as the premium and best of all. Sure, those are really good quality chocolate but for the sake of variety, I like to try chocolates from as many countries as possible. I have tried Swiss chocolate, German chocolate, Italian chocolate and American chocolate.

You may think chocolate taste the same wherever it came from but I beg to differ. There are very distinctive different in taste and flavor in the chocolates that came from different countries and manufacturers. Perhaps it is the different processes they go through or perhaps, it is the ingredients they used.

So, recently I decided to give Japanese chocolate a try. I have always loved Japanese food and the occasional Japanese junk food so, why not give their chocolates a try? So, I picked up a few packets of Japanese chocolate for some chocolate tasting session and guess what? I absolutely loved it!

Their dark chocolate is absolutely heavenly; smooth, creamy, just the right amount of sweetness and yum, yum, rich and just slight tinge of bitterness. Definitely my kind of chocolate! Though a tad expensive as compared to other imported chocolates, it is well worth the price. Their milk chocolate is also similarly wonderful. There is even an easy melt kind called ‘Meltykiss’ which I particularly liked. Just pop it into your mouth and you will immediately get a burst of sweet, creamy chocolaty sensation melting on your tongue.

My only problem with Japanese chocolates is that the packaging is mainly in Japanese with only the name of the chocolate in English. Even the ingredients are in Japanese and a basic sticker loosely translating it in English was pasted above it. So, if you are the type who wants to know the detailed ingredients of the chocolates, either you have to learn up Japanese or you will have to make do with the loose translation.

I just hope one day they would come out with better packaging with an international appeal…but then, we are talking about Japanese stuff here, I doubt that they even cared about appealing to the international market when they have their very own self-sustaining market…