On the shelves, many spontaneously associate the
dark chocolate to a “health” option, while the
milk chocolate keeps the image of a sweeter pleasure, reserved for children. The idea often comes up in dietetic consultations: should you switch to black to do good for your heart or your figure?
However, both types of chocolate come from the same cocoa bean, rich in interesting plant compounds. The difference comes down to the proportions of cocoa, sugar and milk, and this is where dietitians look closely at the label. The answer lies mainly in the cocoa, the sugar and the portion.
Dark chocolate and milk chocolate: what do the numbers say?
Chocolate is a mixture of cocoa mass, cocoa butter and sugar. THE
dark chocolate generally contains 50 to 90% cocoa, while milk chocolate is more around 20 to 30%, the rest coming from powdered milk and sugar. Black provides a little more magnesium, iron and zinc, but also more caffeine, while staying far from a cup of coffee which provides around 100 mg. Milk provides more calcium.
Cocoa is very rich in polyphenols, notably flavanols and catechins, which act as antioxidants. As dark contains more cocoa, it provides around 5 times more flavanols than milk chocolate. Cocoa can contain almost 17 times more catechins than black tea and around three times more than red wine. However, this advantage is not enough to make all dark chocolate “healthy” if the bar remains very sweet.
Heart, diabetes, blood pressure: is dark chocolate better for your health?
A large review of systematic reviews involving 84 studies and 1,061,637 participants found that chocolate consumption was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke and diabetes. However, the authors judge the overall quality of the evidence to be low, because much of the work is only observational: they identify links, without demonstrating that chocolate is the direct cause of the benefit.
On the
blood pressurea Cochrane review compiled 35 randomized trials (40 comparisons) in 1,804 adults receiving flavanol-rich products for 2 to 18 weeks. The average drop observed reaches around 1.8 mmHg for systolic and diastolic blood pressure, with an effect close to 4 mmHg in hypertensive people. The products tested were often specially formulated cocoa or chocolate, much more concentrated in flavanols than traditional tablets, and generally well tolerated, with rare digestive problems.
How to choose your daily chocolate according to dietitians
For dietitians, the dark chocolate maintains a slight advantage when it contains at least 70% cocoa and sugar does not appear first in the list of ingredients. A higher quality bar will often say “cocoa paste”, “cocoa powder” or “cocoa butter” before the sugar. Conversely, some commercial dark chocolates contain 40 to 50% sugar: a 150 g subject with 50% sugar represents approximately 19 teaspoons. Milk chocolate remains sweeter, but its calcium can be useful in a well-constructed diet.
Dark or milk, chocolate remains very energetic. In practice, many dietitians suggest a portion of around 10 to 20 g per day for an adult, taking into account the rest of the diet. For a hypertensive or diabetic person, the choice of chocolate and the quantity should be discussed with the doctor or dietician. Reading labels, choosing chocolate rich in cocoa that you really enjoy and savoring it slowly helps keep chocolate on the side of controlled pleasure.