Chocolate
Where chocolate sits on the inflammation scale
Chocolate can be anti-inflammatory, but most of what is sold as chocolate is not. It scores 5 out of 10 on the inflammation scale, and where a given bar falls comes down to one thing: how much of it is really cocoa.
Cocoa is the part that helps you. In a standard milk bar it is often less than a quarter of the whole, because sugar is the first thing on the ingredient list. And that sugar arrives fast. Chocolate melts at about the temperature of your mouth, so a bar goes down in minutes with almost no fibre or protein to slow it. Sugar that lands in a rush is what pushes any food up the scale. A milk bar is close to half sugar by weight.
The fat is less of a problem than it looks. Cocoa butter is hard and saturated, but a third of it is stearic acid, which your body handles differently from the saturated fat in butter. It barely moves your cholesterol. That is not a free pass, though: cocoa butter still pushes cholesterol up a little more than a liquid oil like olive oil.
So the cocoa percentage decides where a bar lands. At 70% or more it moves down towards a 3, where dark chocolate sits. Below 40% you are eating a sweet with a little cocoa in it. White chocolate is the end of that line: cocoa butter but no cocoa solids, so nothing in it pulls the other way.
Chocolate on the AIP diet
Chocolate is not allowed on the Autoimmune Protocol, because the cocoa bean is a seed and the elimination phase takes out every seed. A milk bar also brings dairy, cane sugar and usually soy lecithin, so it fails on four counts at once. Most people fill the gap with carob. Cocoa comes back later for many of them, but as a plain high-percentage bar, not as this.
Benefits
- Even a milk bar brings some cocoa, and cocoa carries flavanols that act on your circulation
- A third of the fat in it is stearic acid, which barely moves your cholesterol
- Chocolate is a real source of magnesium, which most people fall short of
- People who eat dark chocolate often have a lower rate of type 2 diabetes
Watch out for
- A standard milk bar is close to half sugar, and that is what sets the score
- Eating milk chocolate regularly goes with putting on weight over the years
- It melts and needs no chewing, so a bar disappears without registering as food
- Milk, soy lecithin and, in filled bars, wheat come along with the cocoa
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Frequently asked
Is chocolate inflammatory?
Plain milk chocolate is, mildly. It sits at 5 out of 10 on the inflammation scale because roughly half the bar is sugar and only a small part is cocoa. The cocoa pulls one way and the sugar pulls the other, and in a milk bar the sugar wins on weight.
Is white chocolate real chocolate?
It is made from cocoa butter, sugar and milk, with none of the brown cocoa solids in it. Those solids are where the flavanols live, so white chocolate has nothing working in its favour. Treat it as a sweet.
How much chocolate is a sensible amount?
About an ounce, which is four squares of a normal bar. At 70% cocoa or higher that is fine most days. As a milk bar it is closer to a treat, and the portion is the whole point, because chocolate is easy to eat by the bar.
Is chocolate allowed on the AIP diet?
No, not in the elimination phase. The cocoa bean is a seed, and a milk bar also brings dairy and cane sugar with it. Cocoa is often reintroduced later, once that phase is over, but as a plain high-percentage bar rather than a filled or milk one.
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