Interesting, but as usual the practical message most of us are looking for was missing. ‘Good’ chocolate, ‘Artisan’ chocolate, ‘supermarket’ chocolate ??? Chocolate with very few added ingredients IS in UK SUPERMARKETS ..... 85% or 90% and price point £1.50 - £2.50 Lots of ppl find it too bitter, but if you change to a low sugar way of eating your taste buds change too and the very dark chocolate tastes sweet!
I so agree with this ...and can't recommend Tesco's own 85% dark chocolate enough😋..I think it's regularly found at £1.10 and unlike my bad love affair with milk chocolate I find just one or two pieces is enough👍
One of my favorite desserts is cutting a medjool date to remove the nut, stuffing it with a small amount of peanut butter (single ingredient peanut butter), a half walnut and topping it with melted 99% chocolate (you can use a different percentage to your taste, check the ingredients list of course), then let the chocolate harden. It’s delicious, and the sweetness comes from the date. I call them my WFPB vegan snickers 😂
Talking about having some snack before going to sleep... I have a smart watch that tells me how much I move while I sleep. I typically range between 3 and 4 hours of "motionless", that it supposed to be when you're resting. I started doing intermittent fasting skipping breakfast and I slept more or less the same. But I discovered that if I skip dinner, my "motionless" increases to a range between 4.5 and 5.5 hours! It's quite amazing and repeatable. I should keep a diary because I was amazed about the effect! So if someone else want to try, we could compare notes! 😅
Such an interesting podcast episode . As someone who has always felt the need to eat a little bit of good chocolate after a meal I now feel fully vindicated!
I just buy 100% cocoa powder for baking and use it everywhere: with yogurts/skyr, in cakes with very low amount of sugar (I add lots of sweet fruit, like pears, bananas, mangos, etc., so with a 1/4 of the sugar in the recipe is enough!), in milk or oat drink... But I don't think I have more than 1-2 tsp a day. Nice podcast! 😄
I also use cocoa powder (from baking section) for hot drink: but now wondering whether it contains cocoa fats as well as solids, given Spencer’s comments.
@@lindaj5492 That's a good point! I've checked and apparently cocoa solids should have around 14% of fat but any cocoa powder I've found contains 21%, so probably you're right, it contains cocoa fats as well. Or maybe they just use the whole beans, I don't know.
An interesting listen. It made me go out and search for quality chocolate at my local supermarket (more difficult than it should be). I did find a couple, though, including a 100% cocoa bar from Montezuma - trying that was a challenge. I did enjoy it, though a small square was enough. As a result, I shall be replacing my cheap chocolate bars with quality ones, reducing the calories and increasing the good things in my gut. Thank you.
I loved this, thanks guys. I have weaned myself off the uk’s typical fave brand…no names mentioned! I love a piece of chocolate after a meal, it stops me raiding the freezer for ice cream later evening. 🍫🍫🍫
I was shocked when I studied the ingredients on my favourite dark chocolate : Lindt Lindor Dark (60% cocoa). Not going to eat that again. I’m now enjoying 3 different 100% artisan chocolates and learning to break through the astringent onslaught to my tongue to allow a cadence of after flavours from Peru, Bolivia, and Madagascar (3 initial mail order varieties I’m trying). I’m acclimatising to it fairly easily. I normally like bitter flavours and will eat a dark roast coffee bean to explore the flavours before buying to make drinks with. Thank you for such an educating podcast and now seeing you and repeating it has really brought the value home to me.
I’ve been eating 100% chocolate for a few years now. You need to savour a small piece by melting it on your tongue. The chocolate hit is intense and once you get used to it there is no going back to ‘normal’ chocolate again.
I eat Lindt Exellence 90 or 95% cacao bars or Élégants Désirs 95%. Both list cacao as first ingredient and sugar as last ingredient. Neither of them has any lecithin or other nasty additives, although both MAY CONTAIN soy and milk (?!?). What? Don't they KNOW what they add to their bars? Lindt is imported to Canada from Switzerland and Désirs from Italy, but neither company lists where the beans are actually grown. I don't know whether to continue enjoying these readily available bars (in supermarkets even) or not. I don't eat these as frequently as I would like or should because even though they are available widely in pharmacies and grocery stores here they are still very expensive for someone on a pension. Any thoughts?
@@ethicscannie5716 I think the "may contain" is just there as a disclaimer meaning those ingredients are used in the factory in other products and it is impossible to guarantee that there are no molecules of cross contamination. some of the same machinery may be used for producing different recipes and minute traces of one product can inevitably find their way into another product. Not enough to detect except by severe allergic reaction.
Great discussion but misleading topic. In fact, no discussion at all on “Is dark chocolate good for weight loss”. I love the ZOE podcasts! Maybe they will do another on the chocolate topic only this time they will answer the question. Fingers crossed 🤞🏻
Since watching this podcast, I've been eating 90% dark chocolate from Uganda...2 pieces every day...and I've been enjoying it. But now I've been made aware of metal poisoning in dark choc and I am very worried and disappointed. I don't know whether to cut down. This will break my heart a little, since it's the one thing I look forward to every day.
My biggest disappointment of the menopause has been my loss of smell and getting odd tastes when eating chocolate, so I couldn’t do the “hold the nose” test. Enjoyed inn this series very much.
Loosing sense of smell due to menopause sounds unusual. Is it possible you have had covid and that has affected your sense of smell? If it is covid that responsible you can retrain your nose with special kits
A great podcast. I wasn’t aware that some artisan chocolate also contains soya lecithin & NATURAL vanilla flavouring. Will be checking bats before buying. Thanks for a really interesting pod cast. 😊
85% Dark Chocolate M & S collection (Peru). Cocoa solids 85% minimum and a great flavour. Lindt 90% if you want to easily limit how much can be eaten. A couple of pieces broken into full fat yogurt with some seeds and berries. Yummy and filling.
I get a headache when I eat good (80-90%) chocolate, it starts as my intake accelerates, then it’s like a withdrawal effect and lasts a day. I’m not imagining this so I disagree with Spencer that it does not cause headache! I eat chocolate anyway because I crave it. This pattern has repeated over years. I just accept that the payoff to the pleasure of chocolate is the headache.
Right that chocolate melts in the mouth at body heat, so does quality Parmigiana Reggiano. Which is interestingly the first solid food given to Italian babies when weaning them. When I eat good chocolate one or two squares is satisfying; cheap, but with bad quality chocolate you just want more and more, so a good test of what to buy.
This is 3 men discussing chocolate, and not getting to the point of the discussion regarding weight loss. Now could we have the companion video of 3 women discussing chocolate, and see where that goes?
Most interesting, but also curiously rambling and unspecific. The section around 25:00, relating to 'personal percentage scores' was not introduced and was incomprehensible. There was a lot of salesmanship for 'artisan chocolate' but actually no specific guidance on what chocolate to buy and where to find it. Apparently it is not obtainable in a supermarket, where most people shop, several references to ' grocery stores' which we don't have by that name in the UK, but no indication about where the stuff is sold, rather than where it isn't. We shouldn't buy chocolate that has ingredients 'that my grandmother wouldn't recognize' which is not an overly helpful criterion. Let's have an actual list of what is and isn't generally acceptable. Who makes it, where is it sold, etc. You don't have to promote one specific brand, but a good range of examples in the description would suffice. So while I am now better educated I didn't come away with much in the way of useful specific actions. And it's 51 minutes of my life.
Putting half a teaspoon of green and black cocoa in chilli con carnie adds warmth and depth to dish. Good with some poultry dishes. It’s less about being able to identify chocolate but if it’s missing it’s noticeable
Tim said “Good chocolate has the least amount of added ingredients” Also “Most chocolate sold in supermarkets is milk chocolate” No one said that you couldn’t buy the better sorts of chocolate at a Supermarket. All the information you need was discussed
There is psychological dependence, not just physical. We can become psychologically dependent on anything, including dark chocolate. Now, where's my 100%?!?
Not one mention of the safety of eating dark chocolate. Consumer Reports tested many commercial products for cadmium and lead and found most unfit for daily consumption. The heavy metals are from the soil in which chocolate is grown.
My favourite chocolate bar is green and black almond milk chocolate but it definitely has a bliss factor which makes it tricky to stop eating so I very rarely purchase now
Bournville gives me terrible migraines. For years I didn’t eat any other dark chocolate because I expected them all to have the same effect. Happily that’s not proven to be the case.
27:00 Glad Spencer rebuffed the comments about addiction & drug-pushing. I found those “jokes” unpleasant and frankly rude towards the guest speaker. And rude again at 34:14 “Spencer, you can’t spend an hour on this (geeky stuff)”.
With a voice like Spencers I would listen to just about anytning and it would sound as divine - that is one sexy voice - what a treat. A dish speaking about everyone’s favourite dessert . Whats the difference between most podcasts and this one - this one has the 100 % sexy Spencer on it ❤❤❤
I have a cocoa tree in my garden. I suck the sweet white pulp and leave the seeds to dry in the fridge. After a month or so I eat the seeds, a couple at a time with two or three raisins for sweetness and moisture. I assume this is healthy.
Montezuma's 100% is the best 100% I've tried! Lindt do a special 99% but it's more expensive and much more chalky and bitter. Lindt's 90% is quite nice.
@@lisadefries6718 this is the brand i've been getting from Sainsburys the 70% organic dark chocolate thinking its great but when he said "added vanilla" i kinda went ....AHH!
On checking my stock of dark chocolate bars, I noted that Tesco's own Intense dark chocolate (85% cocoa) lists sunflower lecithin as an ingredient - so I thought 'Right, that's off the buying list then'. But then all the others (Green and Black's 85%, M&S Dark Ecuadorian 75%, and Lindt 70%) have vanilla listed, So that's them out! Lindt Dark Mint Intense has more sugar than cocoa (only 47% cocoa) and also has soya lecithin and anhydrous milk fat - so I won't be buying that again! On reflection, is the Tesco's own the best of the lot (and it's only £1 for a 100 gm bar)? I doubt it! I'm clearly going to have to spend more on my chocolate!
He didn’t seem too concerned about sunflower lecithin. Better than soy lecithin (he says), which is in MY standard Moser Roth 85% dark chocolate bars from Aldi’s! Price does matter too; I think your Tesco’s sounds pretty good.
To vague on actual examples that we might encounter or seek out. Please provide a list of recommended options and please include some recommendations for people on a budget.
Love these podcasts! So informative and engaging with tons of useful information. However, the host's constant interruptions when the guest is speaking is incredibly distracting.
In Ghana they drink pure cocoa powder with boiling water, the cocoa tea is very tasty surprisingly fruity and complex. Strongly recommend it but I think it must be raw cocoa power rather than the alkalised stuff that is mainly used for baking.
The comment starting at 31:00 about tasting a variety of dark chocolates like people do with wine reminded me about something I was told by a Muslim friend in Malaysia. Islam forbids the drinking of alcohol so they don't get to taste different wines, and my friend said that different durians are prized for their complex tastes in his culture, as many in other cultures do with wine. But for visitors to SE Asia, where durians are common, cannot get over the smell of durians. The smell is very strong and quite unpleasant for those unfamiliar with it. But durians are worth tasting, and once you have the smell won't bother you as much. Perhaps, as was done in the tasting of chocolate in this podcast, you can hold your nose until after it's in your mouth and you've chewed it a bit. And my guess is that durian would contain a variety of healthy nutrients; it is a member of the same family as cacao.
Yes, I was disappointed that they didn’t answer their own headline question or if it’s good for the libido which was a question they posed for themselves!
@@divacassandra1 How do you equate this against if you never ate any chocolate please? How did eating it with its sugar/fat content actually assist your loss?
@@deborahsmith1132 I eat between 200-300 calories of chocolate a day with a maintenance calories of 2300. I'm a man. I weigh over 200 pounds (but I've lost 25-30 lbs in the last 6 months). I also don't limit myself to "no sugar" "no carbs" etc. I've done this and it actually doesn't work for me. Being diligent about counting my calories and being honest about my daily needs has done the trick for me. I usually have a little chocolate every day, sour dough bread (approx. 100 grams or 220 calories), I eat pasta (full fat lasagna 660 calories per serving... one is enough!) , and air fried potatoes. We're making butterscotch pudding and whipped cream (500 calories) right now. By eating this way, you realize you can't lean too heavily on treats because they just will not fill you up. So you end up making better choices around your meals. The air fried potatoes are great for volume. We do a cauliflower buffalo wing that's spicy and delicious (and definitely on a buffalo wing). Anyway... this turned into an essay. I eat full fat dark chocolate daily but I don't pretend its a miracle drug or that its free calories. I eat it because it's a treat that tastes good and is satisfying in small servings. 100 cal of Dark Chocolate is great than 100 cal of Gummi Bears (for example).
artisanal chocolate is extremely expensive here :( i do have cocoa butter and cocoa powder at home, so i'm going to give making chocolate at hone a try. i wonder if there's a way to source cocoa powder from sustainable sources you can trust
I love this Zoe vid. because I eat a lot of sugar free sweetener free plain cacoa powder in my sugar free natural fat free yogurt everyday. Add option is a spoonful of almond butter. Happy Cocoa guilt free! Free2🐝 🌸✨🌿✨🌸 💛💛💛 🎉
Mr Creosote. That's me! Though the I would like to hear more mention of unprocessed cocoa in just water, perhaps with some flax seed, and lightly salted? It's a bitter drink, yet it could be healthy. No?
I snack on Lidl's dark choc 85% which was J.D. Gross whenever I have intense sugar cravings i.e. it's the time of the month. It was actually sweet once you're insulin senstive. ❤
Do you get the same benefits from eating a good quality cocoa powder and using it say in a drink where you can then modify or reduce the amounts of sugar and fat to make it palatable?
@@tonydization probably neither. Stevia might be OK, otherwise a very small amount of raw cane....but sugar is not biome friendly. Are u talking about in drinks?
I know that milk can cancel some of the benefits of consuming tea or coffee so it seems likely that milk would cancel some of the benefits of eating chocolate.
Looks like when one buys chocolate, he does not buy the product, just the flavor. If a produce has 10% chocolate and 15% sugar, it should be called sugar.
It’s offensive to say chocolate doesn’t cause migraines Tim Spectre. Just because there isn’t the definitive research doesn’t mean that this problem is in my head. Chocolate contains tyramines, which is in fermented foods too as you should know. This is a major cause of headaches for me. The dismissive way notions are negated just because there isn’t the research that you have seen is offensive.
The only chocolate I found worthwhile in supermarket stores is Green & Blacks organic 85% Dark. It has an extremely low sugar content compared to others darks at the same cocoa percentage & compared to 60/70% solids the sugar levels are just ridiculous.
Vanilla is a very healthy ingredient! Do not say there is a need to avoid it. I am talking about the reall vanilla. If you are talking about sinthetic vanillin, please, tell it clear!
It is a good discussion but I am sorry but it is too long. If you reduce the time to 45 min would be better because it has been proved that the mind only remembers 10% of the talk.
90% is a bit too high for me straight but I will get it to pair with other things in a desert. Usually paired with fruit. 75% is my "bliss point" for just straight chocolate. I especially like it when its paired with orange zest.
I was the same until I was hurriedly shopping for a camping trip and grabbed a few bars of Lindt 100% by mistake. The first night I almost cried, it tasted so terrible to me. Fast forward 2 weeks the bars were gone and I was a convert! Have stuck to 100% ever since.
I appreciate your concern about fake ingredients. But I whom loves chocolate cannot have any dark chocolate if made with sugar because of adverse blood sugar response. But if my 85% chocolate is sweetened with erythritol I get no perturbations in blood sugar. Nada, zilch, nothing. So until someone has some human studies showing erythritol is bad. By the way my extensive analysis of artificial sweeteners, erythritol has some very interesting and beneficial effects. Long term human interventions won't be done likely in my lifetime. I don't need to see any more intervention trials with sucrose, it is simply as R Lustig points out, a human tissue toxin. Just my informed opinion.
I must disagree about one thing. For me chocolate is pretty certainly linked to headaches. I used to get mild-ish cluster headaches. Not the really bad ones but headaches that went on for days or weeks. I tried lots of things but the only thing that worked was to stop eating chocolate, especially dark chocolate. So now I do not get cluster headaches because if I do start with one, having eaten too much dark chocolate (the equivalent of one dark choc bar can be sufficient) then I go cold turkey on chocolate and the headache goes.
Amazing for me the information herein .I love dark chocolate on the keto diet .I eat Lindt 90% cocoa normally which I have by eating on a regular basis become very fond .
We have an expert here and you constantly interrupt him and Tim does most talking. I get migraines very badly from consuming chocolate regularly - it takes quite some time to develop the migraines so I wonder how long the research ran, as they say it doesn't cause headaches. I have tried raw cacao and I still eventually got the symptoms of migraine starting.
Interesting, but as usual the practical message most of us are looking for was missing. ‘Good’ chocolate, ‘Artisan’ chocolate, ‘supermarket’ chocolate ??? Chocolate with very few added ingredients IS in UK SUPERMARKETS ..... 85% or 90% and price point £1.50 - £2.50 Lots of ppl find it too bitter, but if you change to a low sugar way of eating your taste buds change too and the very dark chocolate tastes sweet!
Well said!
100% chocolate. Montezumas. Available in Tescos.
Well stated.
I so agree with this ...and can't recommend Tesco's own 85% dark chocolate enough😋..I think it's regularly found at £1.10 and unlike my bad love affair with milk chocolate I find just one or two pieces is enough👍
Green and blacks 85% is very good and marks and Spencer’s one is also great.
One of my favorite desserts is cutting a medjool date to remove the nut, stuffing it with a small amount of peanut butter (single ingredient peanut butter), a half walnut and topping it with melted 99% chocolate (you can use a different percentage to your taste, check the ingredients list of course), then let the chocolate harden.
It’s delicious, and the sweetness comes from the date. I call them my WFPB vegan snickers 😂
You can also insert a small slice of those little oranges inside
almonds butter
Sounds delicious!
For the first 11 minutes I found myself yelling at Tim to be quiet and let poor Spencer get a word in edgeways! :)
Talking about having some snack before going to sleep... I have a smart watch that tells me how much I move while I sleep. I typically range between 3 and 4 hours of "motionless", that it supposed to be when you're resting. I started doing intermittent fasting skipping breakfast and I slept more or less the same. But I discovered that if I skip dinner, my "motionless" increases to a range between 4.5 and 5.5 hours! It's quite amazing and repeatable. I should keep a diary because I was amazed about the effect! So if someone else want to try, we could compare notes! 😅
Such an interesting podcast episode . As someone who has always felt the need to eat a little bit of good chocolate after a meal I now feel fully vindicated!
I just buy 100% cocoa powder for baking and use it everywhere: with yogurts/skyr, in cakes with very low amount of sugar (I add lots of sweet fruit, like pears, bananas, mangos, etc., so with a 1/4 of the sugar in the recipe is enough!), in milk or oat drink... But I don't think I have more than 1-2 tsp a day. Nice podcast! 😄
I also use cocoa powder (from baking section) for hot drink: but now wondering whether it contains cocoa fats as well as solids, given Spencer’s comments.
@@lindaj5492 That's a good point! I've checked and apparently cocoa solids should have around 14% of fat but any cocoa powder I've found contains 21%, so probably you're right, it contains cocoa fats as well. Or maybe they just use the whole beans, I don't know.
Great idea - I add a tsp of organic 100% cocoa powder to coffee and it goes very well with it.
That's what I do to, simple.
The cacao powder is usually alcalized and has a lot less antioxidants.
An interesting listen. It made me go out and search for quality chocolate at my local supermarket (more difficult than it should be). I did find a couple, though, including a 100% cocoa bar from Montezuma - trying that was a challenge. I did enjoy it, though a small square was enough. As a result, I shall be replacing my cheap chocolate bars with quality ones, reducing the calories and increasing the good things in my gut. Thank you.
Add a prune or two, good quality ones, and it offsets the bitterness and gives you more plant variety.
I loved this, thanks guys. I have weaned myself off the uk’s typical fave brand…no names mentioned! I love a piece of chocolate after a meal, it stops me raiding the freezer for ice cream later evening. 🍫🍫🍫
I was shocked when I studied the ingredients on my favourite dark chocolate : Lindt Lindor Dark (60% cocoa). Not going to eat that again. I’m now enjoying 3 different 100% artisan chocolates and learning to break through the astringent onslaught to my tongue to allow a cadence of after flavours from Peru, Bolivia, and Madagascar (3 initial mail order varieties I’m trying). I’m acclimatising to it fairly easily. I normally like bitter flavours and will eat a dark roast coffee bean to explore the flavours before buying to make drinks with.
Thank you for such an educating podcast and now seeing you and repeating it has really brought the value home to me.
Yes, Lindt seems to have soy lecithin in most their range. I shall be looking for other options from now on.
Lindt do a 100%, but it's hard to find.
I’ve been eating 100% chocolate for a few years now. You need to savour a small piece by melting it on your tongue. The chocolate hit is intense and once you get used to it there is no going back to ‘normal’ chocolate again.
I eat Lindt Exellence 90 or 95% cacao bars or Élégants Désirs 95%. Both list cacao as first ingredient and sugar as last ingredient. Neither of them has any lecithin or other nasty additives, although both MAY CONTAIN soy and milk (?!?). What? Don't they KNOW what they add to their bars? Lindt is imported to Canada from Switzerland and Désirs from Italy, but neither company lists where the beans are actually grown. I don't know whether to continue enjoying these readily available bars (in supermarkets even) or not. I don't eat these as frequently as I would like or should because even though they are available widely in pharmacies and grocery stores here they are still very expensive for someone on a pension. Any thoughts?
@@ethicscannie5716 I think the "may contain" is just there as a disclaimer meaning those ingredients are used in the factory in other products and it is impossible to guarantee that there are no molecules of cross contamination. some of the same machinery may be used for producing different recipes and minute traces of one product can inevitably find their way into another product. Not enough to detect except by severe allergic reaction.
Great discussion but misleading topic. In fact, no discussion at all on “Is dark chocolate good for weight loss”. I love the ZOE podcasts! Maybe they will do another on the chocolate topic only this time they will answer the question. Fingers crossed 🤞🏻
Since watching this podcast, I've been eating 90% dark chocolate from Uganda...2 pieces every day...and I've been enjoying it. But now I've been made aware of metal poisoning in dark choc and I am very worried and disappointed. I don't know whether to cut down. This will break my heart a little, since it's the one thing I look forward to every day.
My biggest disappointment of the menopause has been my loss of smell and getting odd tastes when eating chocolate, so I couldn’t do the “hold the nose” test. Enjoyed inn this series very much.
Loosing sense of smell due to menopause sounds unusual. Is it possible you have had covid and that has affected your sense of smell? If it is covid that responsible you can retrain your nose with special kits
A great podcast. I wasn’t aware that some artisan chocolate also contains soya lecithin & NATURAL vanilla flavouring.
Will be checking bats before buying. Thanks for a really interesting pod cast. 😊
85% Dark Chocolate M & S collection (Peru). Cocoa solids 85% minimum and a great flavour. Lindt 90% if you want to easily limit how much can be eaten. A couple of pieces broken into full fat yogurt with some seeds and berries. Yummy and filling.
Cocoa Montezuma Absolute Black is delicious and is actually 100% cocoa! Much nicer than the Lindt 90% which is very bitter.
I get a headache when I eat good (80-90%) chocolate, it starts as my intake accelerates, then it’s like a withdrawal effect and lasts a day. I’m not imagining this so I disagree with Spencer that it does not cause headache! I eat chocolate anyway because I crave it. This pattern has repeated over years. I just accept that the payoff to the pleasure of chocolate is the headache.
He didn't say that it never does, but it's very rare?
Right that chocolate melts in the mouth at body heat, so does quality Parmigiana Reggiano. Which is interestingly the first solid food given to Italian babies when weaning them. When I eat good chocolate one or two squares is satisfying; cheap, but with bad quality chocolate you just want more and more, so a good test of what to buy.
This is 3 men discussing chocolate, and not getting to the point of the discussion regarding weight loss. Now could we have the companion video of 3 women discussing chocolate, and see where that goes?
Unprocessed organic cocoa powder is really the only "healthy"form.
Most interesting, but also curiously rambling and unspecific. The section around 25:00, relating to 'personal percentage scores' was not introduced and was incomprehensible. There was a lot of salesmanship for 'artisan chocolate' but actually no specific guidance on what chocolate to buy and where to find it. Apparently it is not obtainable in a supermarket, where most people shop, several references to ' grocery stores' which we don't have by that name in the UK, but no indication about where the stuff is sold, rather than where it isn't. We shouldn't buy chocolate that has ingredients 'that my grandmother wouldn't recognize' which is not an overly helpful criterion. Let's have an actual list of what is and isn't generally acceptable. Who makes it, where is it sold, etc. You don't have to promote one specific brand, but a good range of examples in the description would suffice. So while I am now better educated I didn't come away with much in the way of useful specific actions. And it's 51 minutes of my life.
Never will milk chocolate cross my lips again. Thanks zoe.
Putting half a teaspoon of green and black cocoa in chilli con carnie adds warmth and depth to dish. Good with some poultry dishes. It’s less about being able to identify chocolate but if it’s missing it’s noticeable
Tim said “Good chocolate has the least amount of added ingredients”
Also “Most chocolate sold in supermarkets is milk chocolate”
No one said that you couldn’t buy the better sorts of chocolate at a Supermarket.
All the information you need was discussed
There is psychological dependence, not just physical. We can become psychologically dependent on anything, including dark chocolate.
Now, where's my 100%?!?
Great podcast. Fascinating information. Please send me a tasting box!!
Not one mention of the safety of eating dark chocolate. Consumer Reports tested many commercial products for cadmium and lead and found most unfit for daily consumption. The heavy metals are from the soil in which chocolate is grown.
My favourite chocolate bar is green and black almond milk chocolate but it definitely has a bliss factor which makes it tricky to stop eating so I very rarely purchase now
Try 2 pieces of minced Baker's Chocolate (pure Cocao), Greek yogurt, some walnuts, and a touch of honey.
Bournville gives me terrible migraines. For years I didn’t eat any other dark chocolate because I expected them all to have the same effect. Happily that’s not proven to be the case.
A chocolate pusher, gateway drug, addicted....words that confirm to me that sugar is a socially acceptable a drug of choice.
Very interesting podcast, but it would be even better if the main presenter talked a bit less and let the experts talk a bit more.
Please let the guests finish speaking, before interrupting
27:00 Glad Spencer rebuffed the comments about addiction & drug-pushing. I found those “jokes” unpleasant and frankly rude towards the guest speaker. And rude again at 34:14 “Spencer, you can’t spend an hour on this (geeky stuff)”.
The host talks too much nonesense
Their friends its just teasing thats all
With a voice like Spencers I would listen to just about anytning and it would sound as divine - that is one sexy voice - what a treat. A dish speaking about everyone’s favourite dessert . Whats the difference between most podcasts and this one - this one has the 100 % sexy Spencer on it ❤❤❤
I have a cocoa tree in my garden. I suck the sweet white pulp and leave the seeds to dry in the fridge. After a month or so I eat the seeds, a couple at a time with two or three raisins for sweetness and moisture. I assume this is healthy.
Eating twice a day for me means that I get a little dark chocolate for breakfast. It seems to give me plenty of energy to last until an early supper.
I always buy 70% chocolate from Malmö Chokladfabrik. Just the three essential ingredients and the highest quality.
Loved this discussion.
What ingredients would you expect to find in a good dark craft chocolate?
Good question
I think it should be just cocoa, some cocoa butter and a small amount of sugar (or perhaps panela instead of sugar).
Montezuma's 100% is the best 100% I've tried! Lindt do a special 99% but it's more expensive and much more chalky and bitter. Lindt's 90% is quite nice.
The outer coating of the seed pod is eaten or sucked at by children in the Caribbean..tastes like a peach.
Can you recommend what would be classed a healthy dark chocolate brand?
Green and black? Although I think they use vanilla
@@lisadefries6718 this is the brand i've been getting from Sainsburys the 70% organic dark chocolate thinking its great but when he said "added vanilla" i kinda went ....AHH!
Green and Blacks supposedly high in lead and cadmium 😢
I switched to dark chocolate instead of cheap Cadburys. No other dietary changes. Lost 5kg.
On checking my stock of dark chocolate bars, I noted that Tesco's own Intense dark chocolate (85% cocoa) lists sunflower lecithin as an ingredient - so I thought 'Right, that's off the buying list then'. But then all the others (Green and Black's 85%, M&S Dark Ecuadorian 75%, and Lindt 70%) have vanilla listed, So that's them out! Lindt Dark Mint Intense has more sugar than cocoa (only 47% cocoa) and also has soya lecithin and anhydrous milk fat - so I won't be buying that again! On reflection, is the Tesco's own the best of the lot (and it's only £1 for a 100 gm bar)? I doubt it! I'm clearly going to have to spend more on my chocolate!
Or switch to raw organic un processed cocoa with polyphenols listed
He didn’t seem too concerned about sunflower lecithin. Better than soy lecithin (he says), which is in MY standard Moser Roth 85% dark chocolate bars from Aldi’s! Price does matter too; I think your Tesco’s sounds pretty good.
Montezumas dark is good
To vague on actual examples that we might encounter or seek out. Please provide a list of recommended options and please include some recommendations for people on a budget.
Can you do something on Migraine and chocolate - or anything at all on Migraine please?
Love these podcasts! So informative and engaging with tons of useful information. However, the host's constant interruptions when the guest is speaking is incredibly distracting.
5:05 I’d suggest anything we find enjoyable can lead to addiction. Something to do with dopamine.
In Ghana they drink pure cocoa powder with boiling water, the cocoa tea is very tasty surprisingly fruity and complex. Strongly recommend it but I think it must be raw cocoa power rather than the alkalised stuff that is mainly used for baking.
The comment starting at 31:00 about tasting a variety of dark chocolates like people do with wine reminded me about something I was told by a Muslim friend in Malaysia. Islam forbids the drinking of alcohol so they don't get to taste different wines, and my friend said that different durians are prized for their complex tastes in his culture, as many in other cultures do with wine.
But for visitors to SE Asia, where durians are common, cannot get over the smell of durians. The smell is very strong and quite unpleasant for those unfamiliar with it. But durians are worth tasting, and once you have the smell won't bother you as much. Perhaps, as was done in the tasting of chocolate in this podcast, you can hold your nose until after it's in your mouth and you've chewed it a bit.
And my guess is that durian would contain a variety of healthy nutrients; it is a member of the same family as cacao.
I love the Zoe Podcasts and this one was fascinating and really helpful. However, I didn't find out if dark chocolate was good for weight loss?!
It has been for mine.
Yes, I was disappointed that they didn’t answer their own headline question or if it’s good for the libido which was a question they posed for themselves!
@@divacassandra1 How do you equate this against if you never ate any chocolate please? How did eating it with its sugar/fat content actually assist your loss?
@@deborahsmith1132 I eat between 200-300 calories of chocolate a day with a maintenance calories of 2300. I'm a man. I weigh over 200 pounds (but I've lost 25-30 lbs in the last 6 months). I also don't limit myself to "no sugar" "no carbs" etc. I've done this and it actually doesn't work for me. Being diligent about counting my calories and being honest about my daily needs has done the trick for me. I usually have a little chocolate every day, sour dough bread (approx. 100 grams or 220 calories), I eat pasta (full fat lasagna 660 calories per serving... one is enough!) , and air fried potatoes. We're making butterscotch pudding and whipped cream (500 calories) right now. By eating this way, you realize you can't lean too heavily on treats because they just will not fill you up. So you end up making better choices around your meals. The air fried potatoes are great for volume. We do a cauliflower buffalo wing that's spicy and delicious (and definitely on a buffalo wing). Anyway... this turned into an essay.
I eat full fat dark chocolate daily but I don't pretend its a miracle drug or that its free calories. I eat it because it's a treat that tastes good and is satisfying in small servings. 100 cal of Dark Chocolate is great than 100 cal of Gummi Bears (for example).
@@inca3370 thanks yes eating less will certainly help lose weight
Thank you for great informations regarding chocolate. Ive always use powder cocoa chocolate. Greetings from Orlando Floria.
artisanal chocolate is extremely expensive here :( i do have cocoa butter and cocoa powder at home, so i'm going to give making chocolate at hone a try. i wonder if there's a way to source cocoa powder from sustainable sources you can trust
Very interesting and informative, thanks very much 👍
good lord, stop interrupting your guests when they are explaining something interesting.
Interesting thank you 🙏
My favourite treat is 85% dark chocolate plastered with butter hmm what a combination!
I have. Diary intolerance , need to find a chocolate with no milk at all. Also intolerance to gluten
Which one is the best?
Im not clear why vanilla is bad ?? I thought it was a natural product and just a flavour?
Cocao nibs are nice sprinkled on natural yoghurt with berries.
Most good manufacturers label what percentage of cocoa is on packaging.
I love this Zoe vid. because I eat a lot of sugar free sweetener free plain cacoa powder in my sugar free natural fat free yogurt everyday. Add option is a spoonful of almond butter. Happy Cocoa guilt free! Free2🐝 🌸✨🌿✨🌸 💛💛💛 🎉
Fascinating! Thanks for such an interesting podcast, as always!
I drink unsweetened cocoa without milk most mornings. Is that a good idea?
Mr Creosote. That's me! Though the I would like to hear more mention of unprocessed cocoa in just water, perhaps with some flax seed, and lightly salted? It's a bitter drink, yet it could be healthy. No?
I snack on Lidl's dark choc 85% which was J.D. Gross whenever I have intense sugar cravings i.e. it's the time of the month. It was actually sweet once you're insulin senstive. ❤
Do you get the same benefits from eating a good quality cocoa powder and using it say in a drink where you can then modify or reduce the amounts of sugar and fat to make it palatable?
Yes!
Use raw, organic cacao. Food of the Gods!
So what's best for the biome to sweeten...raw cane sugar or a sugar alcohol like xylitol. ?
@@tonydization probably neither. Stevia might be OK, otherwise a very small amount of raw cane....but sugar is not biome friendly. Are u talking about in drinks?
@@bobadams7654 Yes, to sweeten the cocoa powder in a drink. I mean in good quality eating chocolate they must obviously use sugar too.
Fascinating! Thank you so much.
I want this man as my personal advisor for chocolates :-D
This was fabulous!
Thank you, so interesting
I know that milk can cancel some of the benefits of consuming tea or coffee so it seems likely that milk would cancel some of the benefits of eating chocolate.
I just sprinkle pure cocoa powder in my Kefir, tastes great and no additives
Lindt 70% has vanilla, is this really bad?
I just sprinkle raw cacao into kefir.delicious and healthy..
Looks like when one buys chocolate, he does not buy the product, just the flavor. If a produce has 10% chocolate and 15% sugar, it should be called sugar.
It’s offensive to say chocolate doesn’t cause migraines Tim Spectre. Just because there isn’t the definitive research doesn’t mean that this problem is in my head. Chocolate contains tyramines, which is in fermented foods too as you should know. This is a major cause of headaches for me. The dismissive way notions are negated just because there isn’t the research that you have seen is offensive.
The only chocolate I found worthwhile in supermarket stores is Green & Blacks organic 85% Dark. It has an extremely low sugar content compared to others darks at the same cocoa percentage & compared to 60/70% solids the sugar levels are just ridiculous.
Vanilla is a very healthy ingredient! Do not say there is a need to avoid it. I am talking about the reall vanilla. If you are talking about sinthetic vanillin, please, tell it clear!
I need to meet Spencer 😀
This is fascinating information.
I use Lindt 85% dark chocolate.....takes a bit of getting used too, but is worth the effort
Just having some 100% chocolate. Number of ingredients....1! Cacao liquor. Not for the faint hearted. 😍 👌
Thank you for all the amazing informations in eating dark chocolate.
Most flavourv -- home-grown veges!
18:46+ How do you calculate your “Zoe scores”?
What about Ceremonial Cacao?
It is a good discussion but I am sorry but it is too long. If you reduce the time to 45 min would be better because it has been proved that the mind only remembers 10% of the talk.
Take notes, you don't need to remember everything?
“Rocket fuel for your microbes” Good enough for me: daily portion from now on 🤗
90% is a bit too high for me straight but I will get it to pair with other things in a desert. Usually paired with fruit. 75% is my "bliss point" for just straight chocolate. I especially like it when its paired with orange zest.
I was the same until I was hurriedly shopping for a camping trip and grabbed a few bars of Lindt 100% by mistake. The first night I almost cried, it tasted so terrible to me. Fast forward 2 weeks the bars were gone and I was a convert! Have stuck to 100% ever since.
I appreciate your concern about fake ingredients. But I whom loves chocolate cannot have any dark chocolate if made with sugar because of adverse blood sugar response. But if my 85% chocolate is sweetened with erythritol I get no perturbations in blood sugar. Nada, zilch, nothing. So until someone has some human studies showing erythritol is bad. By the way my extensive analysis of artificial sweeteners, erythritol has some very interesting and beneficial effects. Long term human interventions won't be done likely in my lifetime. I don't need to see any more intervention trials with sucrose, it is simply as R Lustig points out, a human tissue toxin. Just my informed opinion.
I love cocoa ❤
Too much dark chocolate, even 90% cocoa, does make me feel pretty terrible and headachy. I don't know why Tim was so convinced to the otherwise.
I must disagree about one thing. For me chocolate is pretty certainly linked to headaches. I used to get mild-ish cluster headaches. Not the really bad ones but headaches that went on for days or weeks. I tried lots of things but the only thing that worked was to stop eating chocolate, especially dark chocolate. So now I do not get cluster headaches because if I do start with one, having eaten too much dark chocolate (the equivalent of one dark choc bar can be sufficient) then I go cold turkey on chocolate and the headache goes.
A whole dark chocolate bar is a lot. One or two squares, 10- 20 mgs daily is more usual. (That's 3/4 oz if you're in North America). It's what I eat.
Amazing for me the information herein .I love dark chocolate on the keto diet .I eat Lindt 90% cocoa normally which I have by eating on a regular basis become very fond .
Why are they mentioning the bad chocolate brands but not the good one ?
Would be ok just eat organic raw 100% cacao nibs? instead of so cold supermarket dark chocolate with loads of additives. Thanks
Is dark chocalate bad for gastritis with ulcers? Per ur video, chocalate is low in caffeine.
We have an expert here and you constantly interrupt him and Tim does most talking.
I get migraines very badly from consuming chocolate regularly - it takes quite some time to develop the migraines so I wonder how long the research ran, as they say it doesn't cause headaches. I have tried raw cacao and I still eventually got the symptoms of migraine starting.
I don't like chocolates as desserts or ice cream bit love a chocolates sweet just one... dark no dugar is lovely. One bit.
Now people are telling dark chocolate contains cadmium. What is your opinion?
What is the best chocolate to buy?
85% dark plus (I like black and greens organic) or even buy raw cacao it will be bitter but you can add to things
Zotter 100%
What good chocolate can be bought in Denmark?