Can You Give Me Some Reasons to Justify My Chocolate Habit?!

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Can you give me some reasons to justify my chocolate habit? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Sarah from Twitter asks, can you give me some reasons to justify my chocolate habit? Oh my gosh. Come on, we definitely can get that for you. I've got the perfect person. It's JJ and today I've got Max Lugaver. He's the New York Times bestselling author of Genius Foods and now the Genius Life. Here with me to answer this. And besides being an author, he's also a filmmaker and a health and science journalist. He went to college pre med and then he took a film course and fell so in love with it that he decided to go that route and now found a way to merge all of those interests together. He also sings and plays the guitar and even released an album in 2012. He'll be right back with me, so stay with.

Hey JJ Virgin here. Okay, real talk.

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Who spent what and where?

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I'm a huge fan of dark chocolate, and in my work I call dark chocolate a genius food. It's just an incredible food. And even though it is a relatively processed food, it is one of the few processed foods that I actually will wholeheartedly endorse and consume myself regularly. In fact, I make a point to eating a bar of dark chocolate every single week, broken out over the course of the week. And some of the benefits of dark chocolate include that cocoa is packed with what are called flavanols, which have been shown to boost cardiovascular health, to boost brain health, to boost memory function in animal models. And the regular habitual consumption of dark chocolate has been related in people to better memory function, better mood. Although I've never met an upset person eating chocolate, chocolate definitely acutely can brighten up the mood. It's also a wonderful source of important micronutrients like magnesium. 50% of the population doesn't consume adequate magnesium, and magnesium is important for the creation of energy in your cells. It's also important for DNA repair so that you can stay youthful in mind and in body as you age. So magnesium is very important and chocolate is a great source. It's also a great source of copper. So copper is another mineral that few people are talking about, but it's very important in the body. One of the things that copper actually is useful for is pigmentation. So hair pigmentation. So if you are maybe experiencing a bit of premature grayness, make sure that your copper levels are intact. Don't go overboard. You definitely don't want to do that with a metal such as copper, but copper is an essential micronutrient, so you need to make sure that you're getting some every day and people seldom consume the foods that are replete in copper. So overall it's a great food. It I think will make you happier and smarter and chocolate gets my endorsement. You just want to make sure that it's dark chocolate, so 85% cacao or higher. And you also want to look on the back and make sure that the the cocoa has not been Dutch processed, otherwise known as processed with alkali. It'll usually say that right there on the ingredients list. If it has been and if it doesn't mention anything about being Dutch processed, then you're in the clear. Dutch processing, which again you don't want your chocolate to have been, actually degrades some of the health benefits of the cocoa. It basically removes some of those important flavanols that I talked about earlier. The chocolate will still be a good source of magnesium and copper and things like that. But yeah, you really want to make sure that your chocolate is not Dutch processed. So those are the things to look out for when buying chocolate.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

Sam.