Hot cocoa STOMPS soft drinks healthwise....

Today's post: Friday, 4-4-2008

1. Up to 86% of Americans are overfat

“An estimated 129.6 million Americans, or 64 percent, are overweight or obese”

And, of the 36 percent who are of normal weight on the scale, a recent study by the Mayo Clinic found that 62 % of them had excess INTERNAL body fat & related bad health biomarkers to go with it. That shows that 22.32 percent of Americans are of normal weight but are still overfat inside.

Adding that 22% to the 64 % who are heavier than normal weight on the scale & it’s clear that up to 86% of Americans are overfat & as little as 14 % of us are actually lean enough for desirable health results.

The two biggest causes for this overfat train wreck are not exercising & ingesting foods that make us fat.

And, for the average American so far, the biggest cause of ingesting foods that make us fat is that most Americans still don’t know better than to drink a lot of soft drinks.

Regular soft drinks are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Ingesting that tends to make you hungry. Then the calories you take in from soft drinks not only don’t make you less hungry, but maybe more hungry. That means that anyone who drinks more than one soft drink a week is fatter than they should be. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Amazingly, research shows that people who drink diet soft drinks are even fatter. We’ve posted on this once. Next week, we plan a post on the research that found that even when people who DO succeed in taking in less calories by drinking diet soft drinks they STILL get fatter. Yechh !!

And, the average American still drinks soft drinks by the six-pack most months.

The problem is that it’s nice to have something to drink when you want a rewarding experience from it -- & it’s sometimes even important to be able to drink something that picks up your energy level a bit.

Soft drinks, particularly the cola ones, DO do this job well. The problem is that they are about as good for your health & appearance as being in a fire where you get badly burned.

What to do?

If you like chocolate, you are in luck.

Ghirardelli & other companies sell unsweetened cocoa. (You have to be careful of the labels though, last time I was in a mainstream grocery store I found that Ghirardelli & other companies also sell hot chocolate mixes with added sugar & trans fats. THOSE aren’t much better than soft drinks.)

We’ve already posted that drinking unsweetened cocoa as hot chocolate with no added milk or sugar makes your blood vessels more pliable & healthy, increases effective blood flow, AND reduces your blood pressure if it’s high. (It does this better, research shows, & is less likely to be fattening, if you add no sugar. And, adding milk seems to turn off or block these effects. If you like chocolate & are OK with the extra caffeine, just use twice as much cocoa instead.)

Now last week I got information that a small cup of hot chocolate as unsweetened cocoa has an 82,000 ORAC score.

ORAC is a measure of a food’s anti-oxidant effects. And, blueberries have become famous because of their health benefits that come in part because they have a high ORAC score & one higher than most other fruits.

Believe it or not, a small cup of hot chocolate as unsweetened cocoa has an ORAC score that is higher than TEN servings of blueberries.

There you have it.

All soft drinks, particularly in any quantity, actively tend to make you fat & sick to consume.

And, drinking hot chocolate as unsweetened cocoa has astounding health benefits.

So, truly, Hot cocoa STOMPS soft drinks healthwise !!