chocolate healthy or not?

[diane1]

my daughter is doing a project on chocolate and one of her questions is, is chocolate healthy or risky? any opions

[incitatus]

both. It (at least dark chocolate) is high in iron and other trace elements which are good, but is very high in sugar and fat. (it may taste nice, but its basically the equivalen of sweet lard)

[Miss Zippy]

Have a look at the International Cocoa Organisation web site (icco.org) for some statistics on the nutritional value of chocolate and cocoa. Basically, cocoa, in itself, is nutritional and, as incitatus points out, is high in certain trace elements as well as having an anti-oxidant effect. Also, it has been proven that chocolate can help make you feel happier by raising endorphin levels and that can only be a good thing! It is all the fat and sugar that is included in chocolate bars that makes them unhealthy/bad for your teeth etc. UK chocolate contains far less cocoa solids than choccie in most other european countries and because of this, UK chocolate was very nearly not allowed to be called "chocolate" anymore - see the Cocoa and Chocolate Products (England) Regulations 2003. Good to see Brussels have their priorities sorted.

[brawburd]

and, without meaning to sound flippant, it would certainly be unhealthy for my partner if I couldn't have any!

[yousay]

I watched the latest episode of CSI and it had on there that most of the worlds chocolate comes from Africa (I think that was the country) and they still use leaded petrol and of course when it rains the lead lands on the plants and ingested (or whatever term, I have forgotten) so that when we eat chocolate we ingest the lead. Now I know this is a made up program but I found that interesting and you never know!

[mikewith]

43% of the world's cocoa comes from the Ivory Coast, where there is widespread concern at the prevalence of child slavery. So chocolate is probably not healthy for those children, at least. There are also concerns that blight and pests are going to decimate the global cocoa crop and cause a chocolate 'famine'. I know this is moving away from the original question, but it struck me as pretty interesting...