CHOCOLATE PERSUASIVE 1 Essay Example

Chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate is a complicated food with significant benefits, and associated risks to watch out for. Has anyone ever told you that you are not allowed to take chocolate simply because it is a candy? If you think candy is as bad as chocolate, think again. As such, do you think chocolate is good for your health, I bet not. But unfortunately for the many chocoholics waiting in the wings; like any other food it t can be enjoyable if taken in moderation. But there is a dark side to chocolate, with respect to natural sugars. This persuasive paper presents divergent reasons why you would consider eating natural sugars as opposed to taking chocolate.

It has become an everyday battle for most people choose healthy food in eating establishments, being after work or school. Most individuals find it hard to fight against the chocolate cravings once you are addicted to the taking of chocolate, whenever people feel stressed, most people especially the ladies run to chocolate or ice cream in order to calm their stress or that feeling of being overwhelmed. People should know that anything that tastes that good can always have a bad effect mostly to the health of the person consuming it (Matsui, 2005). It is fair to say that chocolate, indeed has some minor benefits to the human body, but most of its benefits are very few as compared to disadvantages. Chocolate has same bad effects on the mind and body according to some research if taken in large quantities, and lets face it all people need a good functioning mind in order to go through their day to day activities successfully (Lakowski and Edward, 2014). In order for someone to maintain a healthy lifestyle, he or she needs at least 30 minutes of some very vigorous exercise, taking of chocolate can only lead to one taking more than the initial time required to engage in doing the exercise as chocolate is considered as a very high-calorie food there one will need more exercises in order to burn the excessive calories in the body that has been brought about by the consumption of chocolate (Lakowski and Edward, 2014). According to (Walcutt, 2012), some people engaging in activities like gym exercise can be seen going to the chocolate machine to quench their thirst with some chocolate milk, this taking of chocolate milk cannot help at all as the fats contained in the chocolate milk will be ingested back into the body, meaning that the fats that they are trying to eliminate from their bodies by being in the gym, is “brought” back into their bodies by the taking of the chocolate. I would encourage these athletes to consider taking water and other forms of energy drinks as advised by most doctors instead of taking chocolate or anything that constitutes of it. In a certain study in England, a study was carried out by students on amateur cyclists, where a certain group of the students took chocolate while another group took water. The group that took water had more endurance than that which took chocolate milk as a refreshing drink (Ogbera, 2010).

As I mentioned earlier, chocolate has very few nutritional benefits and a lot of disadvantage when it comes to the nutritional value of the body. Chocolate consist of a very high density of calories, a bar of chocolate milk can consist of 234 calories. This amount is very high when compared to other snack foods available in the country. For example, the chocolate bar (1.49 ounce) that consist of 234 calories is equivalent to a beef bar consisting of only 120 calories (Mary, 2012). Consuming of a lot of calories can only lead to obesity, one can always burn these calories by doing a lot of exercises but by doing so, you will be wasting more of your time in engaging with exercises rather than doing other activities. I do not think that any person with a tight schedule would want to waste his or her own time doing needless exercises that can be avoided by not taking of chocolate. An athlete can take about an hour to the gym to burn at least 200 calories, although dark chocolate contains some plant compounds that are considered beneficial to your health, it still contains a very large calorie counts and will always be a big addition to the calorie count in your body. If you want to suffer from a heart disease, you should engage more in taking of chocolate as it contains saturated fats, for each 1.44 ounce of a bar of chocolate served, it contains about 8 grams of saturated fats (Marion, 2011). The saturated fats can make you susceptible to a heart attack as it increases the levels of the LDL cholesterol. Chocolate also consists of high levels of sugar which can promote tooth decay; personally I would want to undergo all the pain that are brought about by the decaying of your teeth because at some point you have to visit a dentist which will be a waste of money and time.

It is an important idea for the chocolate consumers to be aware that cocoa is considered as a high energy nutritional food that is rich in sugars. Energy contents in chocolate are considered high enough to cause a significant weight gain to the consumer as it contains about 500 kilocalories or 2200 kilojoules in every 90 grams of chocolate(Marion, 2011). These amounts of energy and the high concentration of sugar is a risky factor for one to suffer from diabetes, hypertension and the metabolic disorders. Chocolate is also believed to be a cause of heartburns; this is because it has theobromine as some of its contents and theobromine relaxes the muscle found in the oesophagus sphincter, thus allowing the stomach acids entry into the oesophagus. Other researchers have shown that chocolate has caused some allergic reaction to children in particular (EFSA, 2012) . There is some scientific research that shows that taking a moderate amount of chocolate daily can have therapeutic benefits to the consumer (Esser, 2014). However the high amount of sugars found in the chocolate must be compensated by the individual doing daily exercise. Therefore in a way, taking of chocolate will lead to the consumer engaging in other activities that he or she did not plan for.

Chocolate has very detrimental effects on a person’s health if you continue consuming it instead of taking a healthier snack, chocolate may contain some few nutrients that are beneficial to the human body, but it is not a considered source of vitamins (World Health Organization, 2013). Scientists may make chocolate appear like a super power food when it comes to its flavonoids constituents; it is not advisable to replace chocolate with the other available snacks or food in general like tea, vegetable and fruits. We need a balanced diet to maintain a healthy life. The balanced diet, as stated by Morris, (2011) can only be offered by meat, vegetables, fruits and tea and not by chocolate as some people may believe. I am not discouraging people to engage in taking of chocolate but encouraging them to take very little amounts of chocolate as it is the salads, yogurt, oranges, bananas and broccoli that will assist you in living a healthy life

References

Esser, D., Mars, M., Oosterink, E., Stalmach, A., Müller, M., Afman, LA. (2014). Dark chocolate consumption improves leukocyte adhesion factors and vascular function in overweight men. FASEB Journal. 28(3):1464-73. doi: 10.1096/fj.13-239384.

3 EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies. Scientific Opinion on the substantiation of a health claim related to cocoa flavanols and maintenance of normal endothelium-dependent vasodilation pursuant to Article 13(5) of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006. EFSA Journal. 10(7):2809.

Lakowski, D. and Edward, R. (2014). How much should the average adult exercise every day? Mayo Clinic . Available at:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/expert-answers/exercise/faq-20057916

Matsui, N. (2005). Ingested cocoa can prevent high fat diet-induced obesity by regulating the expression of genes for fatty acid metabolism. Nutrition. 21, 594-601.

Morris, P. (2011). The effect of flavone-rich cocoa on the fMRI response to a cognitive task in healthy young people. Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacol 47(2), 221-3.

Marion, N. (2011). Food Politics. Accessed at http://www.foodpolitics.com/tag/chocolate/

Ogbera, A. (2010). Prevalence and gender distribution of the metabolic syndrome.
Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome 2 (1).

Mary, O. (2012) Top ten chocolate manufacturers worldwide. Data monitor Computer Wire, 2012

Walcutt, D. (2012). Chocolate and Mood Disorders. Psych Central; Available at http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/04/27/chocolate-and-mood-disorders/.

World Health Organization. Cardiovascular diseases. Fact Sheet No 317. 2011. Available at www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs317/fr/index.html. In ref. 4