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#1 A941

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Posted 19 February 2014 - 09:17 PM


I have a strange Question: How do you get away from Chocolate and other Sweets?
Iam not overweight, but I eat to much of them and I know its not good.

#2 Jembe

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Posted 20 February 2014 - 06:35 PM

You stop eating them. The less you eat sweets, the less cravings you'll have. I've given up all sweets and desserts (actually all carbohydrates) for life, and I don't miss them.
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#3 bracconiere

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Posted 22 February 2014 - 12:56 AM

learn to ferment them, lol
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#4 Chupo

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Posted 22 February 2014 - 09:30 PM

It you want the benefits of chocolate without the cravings, try baker's chocolate. You won't eat nearly as much.

#5 Methodician

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Posted 15 May 2014 - 08:17 PM

I'm not sure why you would want to avoid chocolate. Just buy 80%+ Cacao chocolate and enjoy. I usually eat 10-30 grams of 85% Green & Black's organic dark chocolate daily. It's not addictive or anything. I sometimes go a week or two without and hardly remember to buy more. When you have a snackie urge, dark chocolate is a great way to satisfy it without feeling guilty.

 

Now milk chocolate or overly sweet chocolate is just junk food. Real, good quality chocolate is real food and quite nutritious.


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#6 Thorsten3

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Posted 17 June 2014 - 08:17 AM

Dark chocolate is still processed, no matter how it's dressed up. So many people here buy bars of dark chocolate. I don't understand why to be honest. It's still man made junk, but becaue it's darker in colour, people think it's super healthy or something. Just buy raw cacao powder and drink it in hot milk/water if you want the benefits from chocolate.

 

I can confirm from my own experiences that processed cocoa is not even comparable to raw chocolate.


Edited by Thorsten2, 17 June 2014 - 08:20 AM.

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#7 timar

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Posted 17 June 2014 - 10:46 AM

So chocolate is "man made junk" because it is "processed". What about raw cacao powder, isn't it processed as well? Aren't the raw cacao beans fermented, dried, and ground to a fine powder? So, stupid raw-food dogmatism aside - why should the additional step of roasting transform a health food into a junk food? The major loss of polyphenols happens during fermentation and sun-drying, not during roasting. Unfermented cacao beans are unpalatably bitter and have no cacao aroma at all. Raosting may further reduce the flavonoid conttent by 20-50%, but half of a shitload is still a shitload. On the other hand, roasting does not only vastly improve the taste of cacao but also produces compounds which may excert beneficial hormetic effect and actually add to the health benefits of chocolate. It seems that some of the health benefits of drinking coffee may be due to the maillard reaction products formed during roasting and the same could be true for cacao. Taking this possibility into account it seems more reasonable to me to use ordinary, roasted cocao powder (I use it in my Polypulp), since it is not only much more cost efficient (only half as much polyphenols as raw cacao but much less than half the price), but nearly all human studies done with cacao actualy used ordinary, roasted cacao.


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#8 bracconiere

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Posted 17 June 2014 - 05:50 PM

So chocolate is "man made junk" because it is "processed". What about raw cacao powder, isn't it processed as well? Aren't the raw cacao beans fermented, dried, and ground to a fine powder? So, stupid raw-food dogmatism aside - why should the additional step of roasting transform a health food into a junk food? The major loss of polyphenols happens during fermentation and sun-drying, not during roasting. Unfermented cacao beans are unpalatably bitter and have no cacao aroma at all. Raosting may further reduce the flavonoid conttent by 20-50%, but half of a shitload is still a shitload. On the other hand, roasting does not only vastly improve the taste of cacao but also produces compounds which may excert beneficial hormetic effect and actually add to the health benefits of chocolate. It seems that some of the health benefits of drinking coffee may be due to the maillard reaction products formed during roasting and the same could be true for cacao. Taking this possibility into account it seems more reasonable to me to use ordinary, roasted cocao powder (I use it in my Polypulp), since it is not only much more cost efficient (only half as much polyphenols as raw cacao but much less than half the price), but nearly all human studies done with cacao actualy used ordinary, roasted cacao.

 

 

Not to sound to critical, but actually, grinding cocoa nib s produces cocoa butter which is than separated to cocoa liquor and powder. More like grinding peanuts to peanut butter than getting peanut flour, and peanut oil out of it....

 

Come on now, your from Germany. You guys are supposed to be chocolate masters right? :)


Edited by bracconiere, 17 June 2014 - 05:53 PM.


#9 dankis

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Posted 17 June 2014 - 06:20 PM

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Cocoa_solids

Why can't you just buy a natural cocoa powder which is lighter in colour and comparable in price to ordinary Dutch processed. "Normal" alkali treated cocoa powder contain about 60 to 90% less flavonoids.



#10 Mind

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Posted 21 June 2014 - 06:34 PM

Dark chocolate bars are for "getting your fix" without killing yourself. 70% cocoa and up, has a lot of good epidemiological evidence (as good as that gets) behind it. Too much milk chocolate will kill you quicker. Dark chocolate won't.



#11 Thorsten3

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Posted 30 June 2014 - 08:04 AM

So chocolate is "man made junk" because it is "processed". What about raw cacao powder, isn't it processed as well? Aren't the raw cacao beans fermented, dried, and ground to a fine powder? So, stupid raw-food dogmatism aside - why should the additional step of roasting transform a health food into a junk food? The major loss of polyphenols happens during fermentation and sun-drying, not during roasting. Unfermented cacao beans are unpalatably bitter and have no cacao aroma at all. Raosting may further reduce the flavonoid conttent by 20-50%, but half of a shitload is still a shitload. On the other hand, roasting does not only vastly improve the taste of cacao but also produces compounds which may excert beneficial hormetic effect and actually add to the health benefits of chocolate. It seems that some of the health benefits of drinking coffee may be due to the maillard reaction products formed during roasting and the same could be true for cacao. Taking this possibility into account it seems more reasonable to me to use ordinary, roasted cocao powder (I use it in my Polypulp), since it is not only much more cost efficient (only half as much polyphenols as raw cacao but much less than half the price), but nearly all human studies done with cacao actualy used ordinary, roasted cacao.

 

Well, the dark chocolate that I have eaten always has additives of some sort, which I suspect is what gives me such a negative reaction. Also, I get ACTUAL benefits from cacao powder that I don't get from a 70% cocoa chocolate bar.

 

The benefits I notice:

 

Noticably clearer skin

Better erections (don't get that at all from a chocolate bar)

Effects on mood (although, I've been using it for so many years now I no longer get euphoria from cacao)

 

Obviously just my n=1. And anyone reading this might just conclude that my percieved results are down to placebo.

 

Not to say that a dark chocolate bar can't be part of a healthy diet. If you put cocoa into the cronometer, it isn't that bad for nutritional quality.

 

 


Edited by Thorsten2, 30 June 2014 - 08:37 AM.

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#12 timar

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Posted 30 June 2014 - 09:07 AM

Not to sound to critical, but actually, grinding cocoa nib s produces cocoa butter which is than separated to cocoa liquor and powder. More like grinding peanuts to peanut butter than getting peanut flour, and peanut oil out of it....

 

You are right of course - well, not entirely, because grinding cocoa beans produces cocoa mass, not cocoa butter, which is the isolated fat fraction produced by pressing the beans, which are then ground to produce the high-fat powder, or further defatted for the low-fat powder. I guess I was thinking of cocoa mass instead of powder. Anyway: if you buy a dark chocolate you want to make sure that the first ingredient is cocao mass or liquor as only this term refers to the unrefined, ground beans. Cocao butter, on the other hand, is probably refined and thus missing some valuable constituents. The total percentage however only refers to the cocoa solids, which also applies to cocao butter - hence a 100% "dark" chocolate could theoretically be made out of 100% refined cocao butter.

 

Come on now, your from Germany. You guys are supposed to be chocolate masters right? :)

 

Well, to be perfectly honest I think that title goes to our neighbours the Swiss and/or the Belgians. We are clever enough to let them dispute over who deserves the title and instead focus on eating all the chocolate* they produce :-D

 

*Of course most of that is milk chocolate but in constrast to the UK where people eat huge amounts of sweet chocolate bars, Germans have a strong affinity for dark chocolate (maybe it's because it resembles Schwarzbrot? :happy:). You can get decent quality, 80% chocolate for less than 1€ a 100g bar in every supermarket here.)

 

Well, the dark chocolate that I have eaten always has additives of some sort, which I suspect is what gives me such a negative reaction. Also, I get ACTUAL benefits from cacao powder that I don't get from a 70% cocoa chocolate bar.

 

Unless you are allergic to soy there should be little reason to worry. The only additives most brands of dark chocolate contain are soy lecithin (which could actually be considered a health food, as it contains 20% phosphatidylcholine) and vanillin. The best quality dark chocolates contain neither lecithin nor vanillin but only real vanilla extract (if any).

 

Better erections (don't get that at all from a chocolate bar)

 

Well, I don't get erections from eating chocolate bars either, which I don't really consider a disadvantage because otherwise it could lead to some potentially embarrassing situations. :happy:

 

Lastly, you are right about the processing, but, I was mostly referring to things that are heated. You can grind cacao beans, sure, but their nutritional aspects would still be there. It's like if you grind nuts into a nut butter, or pulverise fruit in a blender. The nutrition will still be there. Not quite raw I guess, but hardly deviating far from it. Now lets roast the fruit after we've blended it. Still good?

 

I don't think that would make much of a difference, actually.


Edited by timar, 30 June 2014 - 09:43 AM.


#13 Thorsten3

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Posted 30 June 2014 - 09:26 AM

 

Not to sound to critical, but actually, grinding cocoa nib s produces cocoa butter which is than separated to cocoa liquor and powder. More like grinding peanuts to peanut butter than getting peanut flour, and peanut oil out of it....

 

You are right of course - well, not entirely, because grinding cocoa beans produces cocao mass, not cocoa butter, which is the isolated fat fraction produced by pressing the beans, which are then ground to produce the high-fat powder, or further defatted for the low-fat powder. I guess I was thinking of cocoa mass instead of powder. Anyway: if you buy a dark chocolate you want to make sure that the first ingredient is cocao mass or liquor as only this term is refering to the unrefined, ground beans. Cocao butter on the other hand is probably refined and is thus missing some valuable constituents. The total percentage however is only refering to the cocoa solids, which also applies to cocao butter - so a 100% "dark" chocolate could theoretically be made out of 100% refined cocao butter.

 

 

Come on now, your from Germany. You guys are supposed to be chocolate masters right? :)

 

Well, to be perfectly honest I think that title goes to our neighbour the Swiss and/or the Belgians. We are clever enough to let them dispute over who makes the best chocolate and instead focus on eating all the chocolate* they produce :-D

 

*Of course most of that is milk chocolate but in constrast to the UK where people eat hughe amounts of sweet chocolate bars, Germans have a strong affinity for dark chocolate (maybe it's because it resembles Schwarzbrot? :happy:). You can get decent quality, 80% chocolate for less than 1€ in every supermarket here.)

 

 

Well, the dark chocolate that I have eaten always has additives of some sort, which I suspect is what gives me such a negative reaction. Also, I get ACTUAL benefits from cacao powder that I don't get from a 70% cocoa chocolate bar.

 

 

Unless you are allergic to soy there should be little reason to worry. The only additives most brands of dark chocolated contain are soy lecithin (which could actually be considered a health food, as it contains 20% phosphatidylcholine) and vanillin. The best quality dark chocolates contain neither lecithin nor vanillin but only real vanilla extract (if any).

 

Better erections (don't get that at all from a chocolate bar)

 

Well, I don't get erections from eating chocolate bars either, which I don't really consider a disadvantage because otherwise it could lead to some potentially embarrasing situations. :happy:

 

 

 

Lastly, you are right about the processing, but, I was mostly referring to things that are heated. You can grind cacao beans, sure, but their nutritional aspects would still be there. It's like if you grind nuts into a nut butter, or pulverise fruit in a blender. The nutrition will still be there. Not quite raw I guess, but hardly deviating far from it. Now lets roast the fruit after we've blended it. Still good?

 

I don't think that would make much of a difference, actually.

 

 

 

A difference to what, sorry?

 

The roasting process would destroy vitamins, phytonutrients and other such things that are delicate to the heating process. Of course, the minerals, amino acids and more robust vitamins and phytonutrients would survive, so the fruit would still be a nutritious food. But the roasted fruit is hardly going to be the same as the same piece of fruit in its raw state.

 

I prefer my bananas raw, whereas you would have no bones about roasting them if needs be. No problem. We're all different, and different things work for different individuals.

 

Cooking certain types of raw food can make it more edible. Like a potato. So yeah, it depends on the food and how the individual reacts to it. And my opinions on chocolate are in line with what negatives/benefits I notice.

 

I made my observations clear about the differences between raw cacao beans/nibs and 70% dark chocolate bars in my last post. Those are my views, and i know what I prefer.

 

Raw cacao doesn't give me erections, per se. I worded that badly. So, to clarify; I notice better erections. This isn't viagra, nor is it a magic bullet for someone's lame sex drive. Just one of many things that somebody can use to help in that area.

 

I react terribly to all dark chocolate. And no, it isn't the fat or the sugar. Being on a Ray Peat inspired type of diet, I eat a lot of sugar and saturated fat with no issues.
 


Edited by Thorsten2, 30 June 2014 - 09:28 AM.


#14 timar

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Posted 30 June 2014 - 09:35 AM

If was refering to the difference of roasting the ground nuts/beans vs. roasting them whole.

 

Of course I would not roast a banana. That's hilarious. Most foods are perfectly fine to eat raw and many are diminished in their nutritional quality by processing. Some like starchy grains, beans and tubers need to be heated or processed in other ways to be edible or even most nutritious. And coffee and cocoa need to be roasted. There is no law of nature determining that raw foods are always best, just a general tendency to which there are exceptions.


Edited by timar, 30 June 2014 - 09:40 AM.


#15 Chupo

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 02:31 AM

Interesting, new study about dark chocolate:

 

 

Abstract

Introduction. The aim of this study was to assess the vascular benefits of dark chocolate in healthy and young individuals. Methods. A randomized and controlled trial was carried out involving 60 healthy volunteers, randomized into two groups: control group (CG; ) and intervention group (IG; ). The IG ingested a daily dosage of 10 g of dark chocolate (>75% cocoa) for a month. Blood pressure (BP), flow-mediated dilation (FMD), arterial stiffness index (ASI), aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV), and pulse wave analysis (PWA) were assessed at baseline and one week after the one-month intervention period. Results. Arterial function improved after intervention in the IG, with PWV decreasing from  m/s to  m/s ( ), with no significant differences observed in the CG. A significant decrease in ASI ( to ; ) and AiX ( to ; ) was also depicted for the IG. Endothelial function improved in the IG, with the FMD increasing 9.31% after the 1-month intervention ( ), with no significant variation in the CG. Conclusion. The daily ingestion of 10 g dark chocolate (>75% cocoa) during a month significantly improves vascular function in young and healthy individuals.

 

  Central Arterial Hemodynamic Effects of Dark Chocolate Ingestion in Young Healthy People: A Randomized and Controlled Trial

 

 


Edited by Chupo, 15 July 2014 - 02:34 AM.

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#16 shifter

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 05:41 AM

I had a 90% lindt chocolate bar the other day. I could eat the whole block without feeling the least bit guilty. Less than 5g sugar. Contrast that to white 'chocolate' with 50g sugar.

 

The additives in the dark chocolate are what? Vanilla extract?

 

The best chocolate I had was the 99% one. I'm serious, thats the only way to eat chocolate!!

 

Dark chocolate is certainly a healthier choice if someone was going to go out and buy a chocolate bar. Not comparing it to unprocessed raw cocoa beans of course. When in the supermarket and you are confronted with the white, milk and dark varieties, the dark ones are clearly better. More cocoa, less sugar, less milk and less additives (or at least less of a % of them)

 

 



#17 timar

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 08:39 AM

 

Thanks for digging that up, Chupo.

 

I think this is an extremely interesting study because it shows that a very low dose (10 g/day) of ordinary 75% dark chocolate (no ridiculously overpriced "raw cocoa nibs", not even your elitist 99% Lindt chocolate ;)) produced significant vascular benefits in healthy young poeple (avarage age ~20, BMI ~23, cholesterol ~160, few smokers).

 

This study once again exemplifies what I always try to point out against all marketing BS, elitist attitudes and irrational ideas of purity: in nutrition, just like anywhere else, there is a law of diminishing returns: it doesn't really matter all that much whether you eat a decent store brand of 75% dark chocolate, the expensive raw cocoa from the health food store or the even more expensive, highly advertised cocoa polyphenol supplement. Just as it makes no difference whether you drink some ordinary, quality coffee or spend five time as much on "bulletproof" (=BS) coffee, or if you are a strict vegetarian or indulge in eating a steak a few times a year, even if it is not "100% grass-finished pastured organic".

 

 


Edited by timar, 15 July 2014 - 08:56 AM.

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#18 Dolph

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 11:14 AM

I even would add that a certain degree of agnosticism might not be so wrong.
The one thing we know for sure is that there is a mindboggling number of "unknown unknowns".
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#19 Clacksberg

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 12:11 PM

Roasting? no Advanced glycation end products? -)

 

So chocolate is "man made junk" because it is "processed". What about raw cacao powder, isn't it processed as well? Aren't the raw cacao beans fermented, dried, and ground to a fine powder? So, stupid raw-food dogmatism aside - why should the additional step of roasting transform a health food into a junk food? The major loss of polyphenols happens during fermentation and sun-drying, not during roasting. Unfermented cacao beans are unpalatably bitter and have no cacao aroma at all. Raosting may further reduce the flavonoid conttent by 20-50%, but half of a shitload is still a shitload. On the other hand, roasting does not only vastly improve the taste of cacao but also produces compounds which may excert beneficial hormetic effect and actually add to the health benefits of chocolate. It seems that some of the health benefits of drinking coffee may be due to the maillard reaction products formed during roasting and the same could be true for cacao. Taking this possibility into account it seems more reasonable to me to use ordinary, roasted cocao powder (I use it in my Polypulp), since it is not only much more cost efficient (only half as much polyphenols as raw cacao but much less than half the price), but nearly all human studies done with cacao actualy used ordinary, roasted cacao.

 



#20 timar

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 01:35 PM

Roasting? no Advanced glycation end products? -)

 

Uribarri et al. tested several types of chocolate and while all did contain some AGEs (like all fats or fatty foods), the levels were relatively low (18 kU/g for dark chocolate compared to 27 kU/g for raw cashews or 55 kU/g for almonds based on the immunosorbent assay for carboxymethyllysine). The Maillard reaction is an incredibly complex process with a huge diversity of products depending on the exact conditions - some of them AGEs, some benign, some of them genotoxic and some even antioxidants. For coffee there is evidence that beneficial effects excerted by those compounds outweigh detrimental effects and the same is probably true for cocoa, given all the evidence for health benefits.


Edited by timar, 15 July 2014 - 01:41 PM.

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#21 Clacksberg

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 02:19 PM

I'm still on a learning curve with biochem and nutrition - so thats informative, thanks.



#22 timar

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 02:27 PM

I'm still on a learning curve with biochem and nutrition - so thats informative, thanks.

 

We all are. :) I agree that it is counterintuitive that something roasted to such a dark color is actually low in AGEs...
 


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#23 oneshot2shots

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Posted 23 July 2014 - 02:02 AM

 

 

Thanks for digging that up, Chupo.

 

I think this is an extremely interesting study because it shows that a very low dose (10 g/day) of ordinary 75% dark chocolate (no ridiculously overpriced "raw cocoa nibs", not even your elitist 99% Lindt chocolate ;)) produced significant vascular benefits in healthy young poeple (avarage age ~20, BMI ~23, cholesterol ~160, few smokers).

 

This study once again exemplifies what I always try to point out against all marketing BS, elitist attitudes and irrational ideas of purity: in nutrition, just like anywhere else, there is a law of diminishing returns: it doesn't really matter all that much whether you eat a decent store brand of 75% dark chocolate, the expensive raw cocoa from the health food store or the even more expensive, highly advertised cocoa polyphenol supplement. Just as it makes no difference whether you drink some ordinary, quality coffee or spend five time as much on "bulletproof" (=BS) coffee, or if you are a strict vegetarian or indulge in eating a steak a few times a year, even if it is not "100% grass-finished pastured organic".

 

 

I suppose if you can't afford decent coffee (or grassfed steak), this is a good viewpoint to have. People who actually drink coffee as opposed to theorizing about drinking it will notice a huge difference in how they feel after trying various brands.There is simply no way I can get by on cheap, crap coffee. A crash and jitters are inevitable. 

 

And yes, given that grass-fed meat is way more nutrient dense than grain fed meat, it will make a difference. Do you really think the quality of grain fed meat, kept in a stall of its own slime and fed grains and god knows all its life is going to be the same as a cow set to pasture? Common sense getting screwed over once again.   


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