Join the dark side

I’ve always been a chocolate fan and have indulged in almost every mainstream chocolate product available. But I’m not one of those chocoholic freaks. I eat chocolate responsibly and never to excess. My personal favourite is plain Cadbury “glass and a half of full cream dairy milk” chocolate.
There are many grades of chocolate out there, but I’ve always favoured the milk chocolate variety. However, after recently snacking on a Flake Noir bar, I was reintroduced to the refined, potent flavor of dark chocolate - the “noir” coating on a regular flake in this instance.

The noir darkness juxstaposed with the wholesome dairy milk brought about an overpowering sense of mystery and danger to this fusion of light and shade, which I later succumbed to fully, in the dark, chocolatey goodness of a Nestle Club bar.

The other day I heard an ad on the radio for nestle club, proclaiming it to have 3 times the anti-oxidants of red wine. Now I know oxidation is bad, it’s what causes iron to rust, so anything that slows down or impedes the rusting process on the body is a good thing.
So, armed with that bit of information I eagerly hit the interweb to find out more on the medicinal properties of dark chocolate. Here’s what I found on wikipedia:

“Recent studies have shown that cocoa or dark chocolate has potent health benefits for people. Dark chocolate is full of the flavonoids epicatechin and gallic acid, which are antioxidants that help protect blood vessels, promote cardiac health, and prevent cancer. It also has been effectively demonstrated to counteract mild hypertension. In fact, dark chocolate has more flavonoids than any other antioxidant-rich food such as red wine, green and black tea, and blueberries”

Woohoo, there you have it, dark chocolate is good for you. (Ok, so there are a few factors against it, like being bad for the complexion, toxic to animals and the high calorie and sugar content, but I reckon the good far out weighs the bad in this case.)