Burning body fat with milk chocolate? According to a new study, it's possible in post-menopausal women.
While most will espouse the fat-causing qualities of the sugary treat, a new study published in The FASEB Journal took nineteen post-menopausal women and had them consume 100 g. of chocolate an hour after waking or an hour before going to sleep.
They found that despite the extra calories, they didn't gain significant body weight. In fact, the morning chocolate could help burn fat and reduce blood glucose and daily cortisol levels. This helps with stress-related cravings, as cortisol is created by the adrenal glands to deal with stress.
“Our findings highlight that not only ‘what’ but also ‘when’ we eat can impact physiological mechanisms involved in the regulation of body weight,” said Frank A.J.L Scheer, a Harvard Medical School professor at the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, departments of Medicine and Neurology at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who co-authored the study, according to the Harvard Gazette.
Women were less hungry after eating the chocolate, and had less desire to consume other sweets, especially when eating the night chocolate.
Marta Garaulet, the other author of the study, stated: “Our volunteers did not gain weight despite increasing caloric intake. Our results show that chocolate reduced ad libitum energy intake, consistent with the observed reduction in hunger, appetite and the desire for sweets shown in previous studies.”
Previous studies have been done on the effects of chocolate - specifically dark chocolate.
A study comparing the satiety of milk and dark chocolate was published in NCBI. The researchers at the University of Copenhagen's Faculty of Life Sciences found that participants who ate the dark chocolate felt more satiated and less hungry than those who ate the milk chocolate.
While studies like these propose the benefits of eating chocolate, they are not long-term weight-loss solutions.
A hundred grams of dark chocolate, in the 45%-59% cocoa range, contains nearly nine grams of fat, according to the US Department of Agriculture's FoodData database. The NHS states that too much fat in a diet can raise your cholesterol, which puts you at risk of heart disease. There is no magic solution for weight loss, but chocolate at the right time, in moderation, doesn't hurt, and may even help.