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Language: en
all right chocolate lovers out there
this video is for you today we're going
to talk about why chocolate is actually
good for your health but very
importantly how do we make sense of all
the information out there showing that
chocolate can actually have dangerous
levels of heavy metals all right uh
chocolate is good for you chocolate is
bad for you which one is it and how do
we actually address this issue I'm going
to lay it on the table because I'm a
chocolate lover and tell you how I go
about thinking uh about a solution all
right first of all you got to know
chocolate is a confection it's candy
chocolate is actually made um with uh uh
cacao Cacao is a plant-based food which
contains polyphenols the more cacao you
have in the chocolate the darker the
chocolate right it's a 70% CAO 80% caca
even 100% caca that's when you actually
have a lot of the polyphenols from from
the cacao plant plant-based one of the
things that we look for uh is for
healthy chocolate is the percent higher
levels of cacao the more the better I
always say 80% or higher is exactly what
you want okay now what does H dark
chocolate do for you it does a lot of
things one of the most important things
uh the polyphenols do is that recruits
your stem cells all right that's right
we all have uh stem C cells in our body
they were left over when we were growing
in our mom's belly in the womb and they
formed our organs all right uh so when
we were actually born there were extra
stem cells left over about 70 million
all right and they all got packed away
stored away uh in our bone marrow so our
bone marrow is the little uh uh spongy
stuff in the middle of our bone if you
ever took a chicken bone and broke it in
half you would actually see that brown
stuff in the middle that's bone Barrow
that's packed with stem cells so uh
eating chocolate the chocolate
bioactives called
proanthocyanidin actually calls out
those stem cells uh into our bloodstream
it signals to them so they come flying
out of our bone marrow like bees coming
out of a hive and they circulate around
our blood and you know what they do they
look for areas that need to be fixed
like potholes in a road they're looking
for where they need to patch
and not just in your uh uh in your blood
vessels although that's a very important
place for um uh dark chocolate to have
its activity the pro anthocyan is stem
cells actually fixt your blood vessels
but also other organs as well right the
stem cells are going everywhere your
brain your heart your liver your lungs
everywhere so uh dark chocolate is
actually a way of stimulating these stem
cells to come on out in order to be able
to do their
thing now uh how do we know by the way
that it actually works well Studies have
been done where they take where they
took men uh who have uh cardiovascular
disease coronary Ary disease we know uh
that they have uh uh ratty ragged blood
vessels not good blood flow and they
actually can do a test called flow
mediated dilation this is basically
where you see how resilient uh the blood
vessels are good normal healthy blood
vessels very resilient all right and
ones that are uh sick uh with
cardiovascular disease not so resilient
so how do you study this you basically
blow up a blood pressure cuff like just
like in a doctor's office um and they
put an ultrasound and when the blood
pressure cuff is completely squeezed
you're actually cutting off the blood
flow all right you count one Mississippi
two Mississippi three Mississippi and so
on and so forth all right there's no
blood flow going through then you
release it suddenly and blood Jets right
through the blood pressure cuff and now
you take the ultrasound to measure how
quickly the blood vessels uh adapt and
rebound uh after the blockage all right
so you have no flow all of a sudden a
ton of flow okay a tsunami of blood
comes out how good is your blood vessel
when actually receiving that how
resilient is it this is called flow
mediate dilation fmd all right because
the blood vessels have to dilate when
more blood flow comes through and it
turns out that uh studies of looked at
um people who have had dark chocolate
actually cacao beverage and they found
that having the cacao beverage actually
helps the blood vessels become more
resilient because the stem cells have
actually come out and fixed and repaired
and regenerated the areas of the blood
vessels in order to keep them as healthy
and as resilient as possible all right
so this is basically taking about two
cups of of of hot cocoa dark chocolate
uh for a month 30 days and some people
are able to double the number of stem
cells that come out of their blood
vessels okay so we now know uh that dark
chocolate is good and why it's good for
us but what about this issue about heavy
metals what's up with that all right
remember I told you cacao uh is a
plant-based uh food comes from the cacao
po if you haven't seen a cacao po it
kind of looks like a hard football it's
a little bit skinnier than a football
all right it's heavy though heavy like a
football and inside are these uh uh
seeds that uh uh that um get roasted and
fermented those are the beans uh that
goes on to actually be crushed and
powderized and turned into cocoa powder
and made into uh chocolate Okay
plant-based all right that means that it
grows out of the ground from a Cacao
Tree now the cacao trees tend to grow on
tropical areas especially volcanic areas
and what happens in these tropical
volcanic anic areas is that um there's a
lot of activity geological activity and
in deep inside the Earth are heavy
metals all right we're surrounded by
heavy metals arsenic lead cadmium scary
sounding right okay you don't want them
from a factory spewing it out into the
air um around your house but I can tell
you that that uh present in the Earth
are natural amounts of these uh cadmium
and lead and arsenic all right so in
plants growing around volcanic areas you
actually tend to have uh the roots take
it up and you wind up actually having
more uh in the environment and so uh uh
cacao uh beans pods tend to pick up more
heavy metals that's one of the reasons
by the way that uh dark chocolate has
these heavy metals all right another
reason that heavy metals can actually
accumulate is unfortunately many of
these cacao plantations are in
industrialized developing countries uh
where they're not taking care of the
environment so some of the cacao trees
are near toxic dumps now you've got dust
flying everywhere that's not healthy for
you these toxic Metals lead and cadmium
and so on and so forth and and a lot of
times these cacao pods are open up and
the seeds are dried right out in the
open right bright sunny tropical
environment drying the seeds well guess
what if there's Le cadmium heavy metals
in the air in the dust they might fall
down onto those seeds they going to get
crushed so um those are two explanations
for how cacao even gets any heavy metal
and although we haven't really checked
yet uh if I bet if you checked many many
plant-based foods that grow in those
areas you'll also see uh uh heavy metals
present but we now know chocolate uh
products can actually have it because it
was a report um uh research report done
by Consumer Reports which is sort of a
research group that evaluates products
for quality and safety and construction
and all that kind of stuff and what they
did is they looked at um uh 28 chocolate
bars and then 48 chocolate based
products this was published a few years
ago across seven categories so hot
chocolate mix uh chocolate bars and even
chocolate chip uh chocolate chips and
what they were looking for are two heavy
metals they were looking for lead all
right and they were looking for cadmium
and what they found is that every single
product had a little bit at least a
little bit of lead or cadmium now why is
that important well if you have a little
bit of lead or cadmium no big deal but
if you continuously eat this ingest it
and you start accumulating lead and
cadmium into your bloodstream well it's
a setup for problems uh accumulation in
our tissues in our body of heavy metal
metal can cause arhythmia heart problems
it can interfere with the generation of
red blood cells so you wind up having
anemia it can interfere with your brain
and cause memory loss it also can
accumulate and damage your kidney as
well so heavy metals nothing to joke
about these are actually really
concerning contaminants in our
environment so what this Consumer
Reports uh uh study did is take a look
at all these chocolate prod products and
figure out which ones actually had
unacceptably high levels so I'm not
going to go into um all the different uh
products uh that they tested you can
look them up yourself on consumer
reports just go on Google and search
Consumer Reports chocolate and heavy
metals and you'll find that report right
out there but in this report the part I
want to call your attention to is that
they also found chocolate products that
actually had the lowest levels of heavy
metal so these would be of all the
chocolates the safest ones to have so
let me tell you what they are the one of
them is called masted organic dark
chocolate
80% okay that's a safe one then coca
tasa organic dark chocolate 70% that one
also had low lead coca it's a cocoa then
girer Deli intense dark chocolate
86% cacao all right that's a good dark
chocolate 86% a lot of those polyenals
and then jend Deli intense dark
chocolate
72% cacao those actually leted the pack
so let me go over them again hey just a
quick note I wanted to share another
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caption below now let's get back to the
video the mass organic dark chocolate
80% uh cocoa tasa organic dark chocolate
70% cacao jiren Deli intense dark
chocolate 86% cacao and girer Deli
intense dark intense dark
72% cacao these are the ones that were
considered the safest all right they the
lowest levels of both lead and
cadmium in any event you shouldn't be
eating too much dark chocolate anyway
it's a candy like what I'm telling you
and uh but these are the ones that you
would actually choose now if you had to
try to figure out how to even get even
less go for slightly lower levels of of
cacao all right so if you wind up
getting um um 80% cacao which is what I
generally recommend um that's actually a
good level you're going to get lots of
polyphenols but if you get 70% you're
also you're going to get a little bit
less of the bioactive but you also get
less of the lead and cadmium as well all
right so that's really what I would
actually do to recommend on how to
approach this issue of getting the
benefits of dark chocolate but
minimizing the dangers of of heavy
metals like lead or cadmium um the other
thing I tell you about dark chocolate uh
my strong recommendation is to nibble on
it and not to just eat the whole bar
down okay like when you were a kid what
I like to do when I eat my dark
chocolate is I like because I like to
get a bar I like to break it into pieces
all right and I will have it with coffee
right so this is like mocha without it
mixed into the coffee I'll nibble a
little bit of chocolate I'll sip a
little coffee the hot coffee will kind
of melt the chocolate in my mouth
absolutely delici es and you get to eat
it slowly so you're not really getting
as much of a glucose Spike all right so
that's a way to do it uh nibble on your
dark chocolate uh and uh really
enjoy our food is something we should
enjoy I mean so many people love
chocolate I don't want to actually
discourage you from eating it but I
think that uh this is one way for you to
understand how to get the best of the
dark chocolate and avoid the worst of uh
the heavy metals hope you found this
useful thanks for watching hi there if
you enjoyed watching this video I know
you'll love the next one stay here and
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