CHOCOLATE

It’s not up there with spinach, but dark chocolate is usually your healthiest bet. The darker the chocolate is the less fat and sugar it has.

Plus, dark chocolate usually is the least processed; that means it has the most antioxidant-like flavonoids, which may help lower blood pressure and cholesterol. The higher the percentage of cocoa, typically the more flavonoids the chocolate has.

But don’t eat lots of chocolate in the hope of better health.

It’s believed that nuns were forbidden to eat it at one time because it was thought to be so romantically powerful. At the other end of the romantic cycle chocolate was used by French doctors to treat broken hearts.

Chocolate does have caffeine. But if you’re looking to get a caffeine boost, chocolate isn’t your best bet.

You’d need to eat 14 regular-sized bars of milk chocolate to get the same caffeine as you’d find in your morning cup of coffee. That would have about 3,080 calories and more than 300 grams of sugar. Compared to only about two calories in a single cup of black coffee.

Dark chocolate does have more caffeine than milk chocolate. Even then, it would take four bars to give you the same caffeine hit as one cup of regular coffee.

White chocolate has cocoa butter, so technically it’s chocolate. But it doesn’t have cocoa solids; the ingredient that gives chocolate its dark, rich colour.

Chocolate has hundreds of chemicals in it, and some work on the brain. According to research, eating chocolate stimulates your brain to make opioids; which gives you a natural high.

The Mayans and Aztecs believed chocolate had all kinds of healing powers. They used it to treat everything from fevers to skin infections.

When chocolate made its way to Europe in the 1600s, some doctors used it to try to treat illnesses such as ulcers and ringworm. Meanwhile, some thought it caused illnesses and drunkenness.

Don’t blame chocolate for your acne. Although diet, especially greasy foods and chocolate, are often blamed for spots, there’s little proof that there’s any connection.

However, people with migraines aren’t so lucky. Their headaches might be triggered by certain foods, including chocolate.

The Aztecs valued chocolate so much they used it for important religious festivals and royal events.

But they couldn’t grow the cacao beans in their very dry climate. Instead, they traded with other cultures for the beans or made the people they conquered pay taxes with them.

In Mexico, cacao seeds are put in a traditional dish called molé. It’s often served as part of Day of the Dead ceremonies, where families celebrate and honour family members who have died.

All sweets are not created equal when it comes to your teeth. A piece of chocolate actually does less damage to your teeth than dried fruit because you eat it and it dissolves. Dried fruit and hard sweets leave sugars that stick to your teeth.

Plain low-fat milk and low-fat chocolate milk have the same amount of protein. But chocolate milk has about 60 calories more per cup and almost double the amount of sugar.