How to Read Chocolate Labels

 

I've gone over a lot of information about chocolate to help you know what to look for when investing in chocolate as a health supplement ... and as a treat. But there's one last tip I'd like to share, and that's how to read a chocolate label.

 

The first thing to ALWAYS keep in mind (and this applies to all food labels) is that you've got to check out the serving size. This can GREATLY affect the importance of other information on the label.

 

For instance, if a can of soda had just 3 grams of sugar in it, this would be one amazing soda, since a typical can would have more like 40 grams of sugar. (If you'll remember from the page on sugar, I consider artificial sweeteners far worse than sugar, so I'm not counting zero-sugar sodas with aspartame.) In other words, 3 grams in this case would be a very small amount of sugar relative to the volume of drink.

 

But if a 1/2 ounce (14 gram) piece of chocolate had 3 grams of sugar in it, then that piece of sugar is more than 20% sugar. (And most of the chocolate I've seen has from 25-50+% sugar in it.) Say what you will, the health benefits of chocolate like that are going to be compromised by so great a percentage of sugar, which contributes to weight gain and diabetic problems. Even if the health benefits overcome the problem of the sugar, the benefits have been REDUCED by having to work against the sugar before helping the body in other ways.

 

(As I mentioned before, some sugars are safer than others for dieters and diabetics. Fructose IS more friendly than sucrose in terms of spiking blood sugar levels. But it still spikes those levels more than 3 times as much as xylitol, a healthy, natural sugar substitute.)

 

Likewise, look for the relative position of ingredients on a label. If sugar (or anything else, but it's usually sugar) comes before any of the cacao ingredients (cocoa butter, cocoa powder, etc.), then you know that sugar is present to a greater degree than those cacao ingredients. If you're looking for the health benefits of cacao, you want its ingredients to come first in the list.

 

Next, let me talk about fat content. I am NOT one to discourage moderate amounts of healthy fat, even during diets. In fact, if you want to lose FAT weight (rather than lean body mass) when trying to shed pounds, it's actually important to eat healthy fat in order to get your body burning fat. You can learn more about that on my health center site: click here.

Fat from cacao beans does NOT contribute to cholesterol problems. In fact, chocolate has been associated with lowering blood pressure.

I personally suspect that the HEALTHY FAT qualities of chocolate may be partly responsible for the weight loss some people are seeing when eating healthy chocolate. Having said this, keep in mind that excess SUGAR will get stored as fat, and so all of this needs to be kept in balance.

 

On a related note, I'm not someone who promotes counting calories, even on a diet. Rather, it's important to be getting the right KIND of calories. Again, sugar represents empty calories, while some substitutes like xylitol can actually provide health benefits when consumed.

 

As you can see, I put the biggest emphasis on sugar while suggesting a look for "organic" chocolate, unless you can verify the source of the ingredients. (And if the chocolate is RAW, this is the pinnacle.) Also, good dark chocolate is made up of cacao liquor and/or cacao powder and cacao butter along with some kind of sweetener and vanilla. Watch out for other ingredients. In Gnosis Chocolate, you have some wonderful extras like blue-green algae and all manner of other options, depending on the bar. But some chocolates will incorporate unhealthy ingredients that you do need to keep an eye out for.

 

Now if you're ready to look at actual products, I've reviewed several on this website. Please visit "Reviews of Products" for a comparison of the healthy chocolates sold through referral (or network) marketing. Or visit specific product pages to see their individual reviews.