Just when you thought that life couldn’t get any better, we are here to tell you that hemp and chocolate have now been combined for the perfect luscious indulgence that also can be called ‘healthy’ for you. What on earth could be better?
Dark Chocolate for Your Health
There are several proven health benefits to eating dark chocolate. Some of them are better known than others so let’s take a look at all of them.
● Nutrition is outstanding – Dark chocolate is full of minerals and soluble fiber. A 70-85% dark cocoa chocolate bar has approximately:
● 11 grams of fiber
● 67% of your daily iron (ladies)
● 58% of daily magnesium
● 89% of daily copper
● 98% of daily manganese
*these numbers also come along with 600 calories and it isn’t an amount of chocolate that you should eat daily, but this is a nice round number that shows you what you can potentially gain, besides weight, from eating dark chocolate.
** Diabetics find that dark chocolate in small amounts is beneficial as well and will not drastically raise sugar levels in most diabetics when eaten in moderation.
● Dark chocolate is loaded with antioxidants. These guys are free radical killers and boost the immune system into high gear. Many in research communities suspect that free radicals are the cause of cancer and they are receiving a lot of attention and research for this. Antioxidants may help naturally boost your body’s ability to naturally fight cancer and other issues that come with aging. Antioxidants help you remain younger looking and keep you healthy a cellular level. Dark chocolate has been researched and found to have more antioxidants than most fruits and vegetables – even blueberries!
● Dark chocolate has flavanols that help to stimulate the lining of the arteries, known as endothelium, to produce nitric oxide. This nitric oxide is responsible for telling the arteries to relax, reducing the pressure which helps to lower blood pressure and your risk of stroke.
● Dark chocolate has been proven to raise your good HDL cholesterol and lower the bad LDL cholesterol, lowering the risk of heart disease and other health issues related to high cholesterol.
Hemp for Your Health
Hemp is being powdered and added to many different products now because of the benefits to diet and nutrition. Touted as one of the major new dietary supplements on the market, hemp is making its mark on the health industry and here’s why:
● 2 tablespoons of hemp seeds only contain a little over 100 calories but pack a punch nutritionally.
❖ 6.31 g of protein
❖ 9.75 g of fat
❖ 1.73 g of carbohydrates (including 0.8 g of fiber and 0.3 g of sugar)
❖ 14 milligrams (mg) of calcium
❖ 1.59 mg of iron
❖ 140 mg of magnesium
❖ 330 mg of phosphorus
❖ 240 mg of potassium
❖ 1.98 mg of zinc
❖ 22 micrograms (mcg) of folate
● It is recommended that the average person consume 3.5 ounces of fish each week to maintain healthy levels of omega 3 fatty acids in the body. This information comes straight from the American Heart Association. If you do not consume fish once per week on a regular basis, then it is highly likely that you aren’t getting your omega fatty acids that are so very important to your body. Hemp can provide you with the supplemented omega 3, as well as omega 6, 9 and protein, making hemp seeds a superfood.
● Hemp seeds also contain phytosterols which work to remove fat deposits from arteries. No one needs to explain how important this is to reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack. Plaque builds and adds deposits to the inside of your arteries, just like build-up on the inside of an old pipe. In time, this build-up will cause the platelets in the blood to no longer be able to pass. They will get clogged and beging to coagulate, causing a blockage that leads to a major coronary event.
● As mentioned before, hemp is a good source of protein. Hemp seeds contain ten different amino acids, which are the main thing we get from protein. Amino acids are the building blocks of the body, essential to repairing muscle damage and maintaining growth and tissue repair. Every single day you use your muscles or cut yourself, your body needs building blocks to make repairs. This is the case internally as well. Amino acids are essential and hemp provides all of them in one food. This is rare.
● Dark chocolate contains high levels of magnesium. For those who are diabetic, it is very hard to maintain healthy levels of magnesium and low levels are almost always associated with metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, and even back pain and arthritis (osteoporosis).
By incorporating hemp into dark chocolate, a super snack has been created. Drizzled dark chocolate on a hemp meal replacement bar is capable of giving you all of your essential vitamins and minerals each day, providing you with immune system support, boosting your body’s ability to clean itself and keep the arteries clean and your blood flowing through them.
Women are especially vulnerable to lack of magnesium in the body. For women, magnesium is responsible for hundreds of daily metabolic functions that can cause you to feel very poorly if your system is lacking. Low magnesium can cause chest pressure, periods that are worse in cramping and pain, lethargy, irritability, and depression.
Make sure that you are keeping up with your magnesium levels, especially if you are diabetic or suspect that you are insulin resistant.
Never has there been a better excuse for indulging in some chocolate now and again. You can consider a small amount of dark chocolate infused with hemp oil or hemp seeds to be a positive addition to your day.
Wash it down with a glass of wine at the end of the day, because we’ve all heard that a glass of wine is also good for you, and you’ll be in absolute bliss with no reason to feel guilty about it at all.