Eat Dark(er) Chocolate 🤎
Want to Improve that Negative Outlook and Improve Gut Diversity? Eat Darker! Chocolate--85% or higher.
I grew up in the Midwest at a time when Hershey was the chocolate brand you had to pick from, which meant chocolate was milk chocolate.
On Halloween, you would reliably get those little Hershey bars. Sitting there on the green shag carpet, going through our haul. I would try to trade my little brother for his bars with rice crispies or peanuts (Krackel or Mr. Goodbars) while making a big deal about any “special” dark chocolate bars I had that could be his for a trade. I didn’t like the dark chocolate because my dad didn’t like dark chocolate. The influence we have on our kids.
Artisan-made dark chocolate chips at Mama Pacha in Oaxaca, Mexico. I don’t know about the patience to make, but certainly soothing to watch.
When we met, Kirsten was so exotic in so many ways that it made me dizzy. Among the list of exotics was, I think, an appreciation for chocolate. She had eaten chocolate in Europe and on transcontinental flights! I now had someone new to pawn off my dark chocolate.
Kirsten writes: While I didn’t have a dislike for dark chocolate way back when we met, I had still eaten way more milk chocolate in my young life. My grandmothers formed my earliest memories of chocolate, and like yin and yang, their opinions about chocolate contrasted as much as everything else about these two women. My “American grandma” had worked in the Hershey chocolate plant in Pennsylvania at some point during World War II—whether it was before or after her work as a riveter on planes (she was that girl) for the war effort, I don’t know. What I do know is she told me the smell had gotten to her. She hated chocolate, which to the little me was inconceivable.
My “German grandmother” would visit once a year from her home in Munich. Her bulging naugahyde suitcases with big chrome buckles, wafted the sweet, beguiling scents buried deep within them. They were filled with bars wrapped in lavender-colored paper, the word Milka scrawled in creamy milk-splashed cursive with a picture of a happy alpine cow. (That was before those bars where available stateside.) My relationship with chocolate was inextricably linked to those milk chocolate-laden suitcases.
As far as Halloween candy, I only ate the chocolates, all hues, and no other candy. I never loved sweets, but always chocolate.
Okay, back to Christopher.
Turns out I had it backwards. It’s the dark, the really dark chocolate, that is the best for us. Let’s dive into some research. Today, we will look at a study that provides evidence that eating dark chocolate daily is good for your mood and your gut.
Consuming all of that dark chocolate didn’t make positive people more positive but it did make negative people less negative.
