December 12, 2008
Dark chocolate makes you feel more satisfied than milk chocolate.
That means you’ll crave fewer sweet, fatty, and salty foods with dark chocolate according to some new research from the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen.
So if you want to eat chocolate over the holidays, dark chocolate may be the way to go.
Here’s how the researchers came to their conclusion…
They took 16 healthy young men with normal weights and tested their responses to dark chocolate and milk chocolate in 2 separate sessions.
For the first session, the men fasted for 12 hours before being given 100g of dark chocolate. They did the same for the second session with milk chocolate.
Both types of chocolate had roughly the same number of calories.
Following each session, the men recorded their appetite levels every 30 minutes for five hours. They specifically noted their hunger level, satiety, how much they enjoyed the chocolate, and any cravings they had for certain foods.
After consuming the chocolate, the men were offered pizza 2-1/2 hours later. They ate until they were comfortably full. Then the number of calories they ate was recorded.
When they ate dark chocolate first, they ate 15% fewer pizza calories as compared to when they ate milk chocolate first.
The men also said the dark chocolate caused them to want less sweet, fatty or salty foods, too.
So if you want to keep your weight down, especially during the holiday season, eating some dark chocolate a couple of hours before meals may be the way to go.
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Filed under Dieting & Weight Loss