Cacao-rich or dark chocolates are found to be having compelling health benefits. However, there is also a harmful side for chocolates to our health. In this blog, I will point out the risks of consuming unhealthy or too many chocolates for our health. With unhealthy chocolates, I mean the popular milk chocolates that have <30% cacao in them. These milk chocolates also contain more sugar and fat than bitter-tasting dark chocolates. Let’s analyze how and why chocolates are harmful to our health.

It has a low level of antioxidants after processing

• Cacao undergoes alkalization (Dutch process) to lower its acidity, increase solubility and modify color and flavor during the production process. Depending on alkalization, the processed chocolate will have a substantial decrease in the beneficial antioxidants, and hence the nutritional value and health benefits get reduced between 60% and 90%.¹

It makes us get addicted

• The presence of feel-good substances has many positive effects in lowering many lifestyle diseases, improving our mood, psychomotor performance, and immune response. At the same time, the overconsumption by a significant amount is harmful, which results in many other disorders and lifetime addictions that make chocolate a boon and bane to human beings.²

• The higher dose of constituents such as caffeine, theobromine, phenethylamine, endorphins, and anandamide causes abnormal behaviors and psychological sensations in the human being that eventually leads to similar effects of marijuana.³

• Due to the high caffeine content, the overconsumption of chocolate will lead to many heart-related diseases such as tachyarrhythmias, supraventricular tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation.⁴

It can trigger migraine

• Due to the presence of vasoactive amines such as tyramine, histamine and phenylalanine, chocolate and cocoa-containing foods that trigger a migraine in migraine patients.^5-7

It creates heartburn

• The presence of theobromine in chocolate relaxes the esophageal sphincter muscle and hence permits stomach acid contents into the esophagus, which creates heartburn.^8,9

It affects our kidney and other body tissues

• The moderate to high amounts of “oxalate” and the presence of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, etc. during the process of cacao production results in toxic effects to our kidney, bones and other body tissues.¹⁰

It makes us obese

• The overconsumption of calorie-rich chocolate without much physical activities will make us obese and unhealthy. Besides, large amounts of sugar and fat added during the processing stage of chocolates.¹¹

It affects our bone

• Due to the presence of caffeine, the over-consumption of chocolate reduces our bone density and impair the micro-architectural structure that increases the risk of osteoporosis.¹²

It damages our teeth

Milk chocolates contain more sugar compared to the dark chocolate and thus reverses the benefits of anti-bacterial effects¹³

Read next: How can we improve our way of chocolate selection and consumption?

References

1. M. J. Payne et al., Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58, 2010, 10518–10527.

2. V. Kumar et al., Nutrition & Food Science, 48, 2017, 61-75.

3. K. Bruinsma et al., Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 99, 1999, 1249- 1256.

4. E. L. Ding et al., Nutrition & Metabolism, 3, 2006, 1-12.

5. X. Gu et al., Journal of Pain Research, 11, 2018, 771-781.

6. I. J. Skypala et al., Clinical and Translational Allergy, 5, 2015, 1-11.

7. R. Tandon et al., Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine and Healthcare, 5, 2018, 631-638.

8. R. Kelishadi, ARYA Journal, 1, 2005, 28-34.

9. S. Rodriguez et al., Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 43, 1998, 485-490.

10. T. Schroder, Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, 24, 2011, 916-922.

11. G. Farhat et al., Phytotherapy Research, 28, 2013, 791-797.

12. M. Jonathan et al., The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 87, 2008, 175-180.

13. H. Hallström et al., Osteoporosis International, 17, 2006, 1055-1064.