Healthy Cooking

Help! I just threw out a bag of peanut m & m's (that my teenage daughter bought) and now I'm dying to fish them out of the trash. I just did yoga. I ate an apple. I still want JUNK! Susan

I always thought having a little bit of chocolate was an ok thing. Everything in moderation?

Of course it's an OK thing, better than desperately resisting the temptation. If you eat a bit of chocolate of 70 and more% cacao, not only you satisfy your tooth, but you in addition supply yourself with some "good mood hormones". Jarmila

OK, so this is the thing.... WALK AWAY!!!!!!!! from the temptation, have some green tea, go for a walk or perhaps better still walk the dog, he or she needs to keep fit as well. Also visit your doctor, you can get something natural to balance you sugar levels and there for the erge for carbs, etc. good luck!! one last thing...... YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats what Ive always heard chocolate is the cure for a lot of cravings

DIG UM OUT OF THERE ! I would freeze them  funner to eat that way

and the peanut has to have some type of protein value

Don't fret ... I keep a small amount of chocolate dotted around my house and I seldom touch it ... I found that if its readly avaiable I don't crave it. Also it doesn't hurt to swap to sugar free. I still get the great chocolate taste and don't worry about the calories or effect on my sugar levels. BUT as in all things moderation is the key to losing weight and staying healthy.

jamila thanks for the cacao info Ive been trying to figure out what type of cake to make !

Have you ever tryed making icing out of cacao?

chocalate is my biggest vise

moderation is the key  -thanks Kate

Cacao Theobroma
Cacao is in the genus Theobroma and species Cacao. Other common names include Chocolate, Cacao, cacaoyer. The cacao bean is the seed of the fruit often thought of as a culinary nut. Cacao beans that are certified organic and raw, dryed at low temperature can be difficult to find. Raw organic cacao is high quality cacao and can be used in raw food treats like smoothies, brownies and pies. Cacao ground into a coarse powder can be made into tea and used as a substitute for coffee or to drink at meals. Upon first trying it the taste was slightly bitter like the first time you eat one of those sundried peruvian olives. Then you try it again and love it. Now it tastes better than the cooked chocolate. Any chocolate Goddess or God will love this treat.

Chocolate cravings often signal Magnesium deficiency.  Try taking a warm bath with 4 cups of Epsom salts in it - soak at least 20 minutes.  Doing this every night for 2 weeks can raise your Magnesium levels by almost 40% - and it feels really good.

nice idea i already been doing that thank you for update though ---

I've always heard that if you deny yourself things you'er craving, the chances of binging and overdoing it and then feeling horribly guilty about it are increased bigtime. Maybe I'm one of the unusual ones, but I'm like Kate. I keep small amounts of chocolate around and have a square or two once in a blue moon. Heck, I have a great organic 70% cocoa chocolate bar in my fridge that I bought two months ago!

Now is this a regular craving for you, Susan, or is this an unusual thing for you, as it sounds like you are trying to be healthy with your apple and your yoga. If it's an unusual moment for you and you're normally on a good food regement, there may be no need to go see the doctor.

Although having an epsom salts bath sounds really soothing right now...

I really cannot understand how anybody could have small amounts of chocolate around, let alone for two months in the fridge! For me, the only thing which helps is: everything or nothing. No matter how big the chocolate slab is, it underlies a very swift "evaporation"

I know a lot of people who look at me strangely when I tell them how I can take such a long time with a chocolate bar. My mom, many of my friends... for them it's the same thing: All or nothing.

It's something that seems to happen, though - if I overdose on something, it means I won't like it anymore, and the thought of feeling sick over something I used to enjoy takes the fun out of eating too much of it. I get my fix after a square or two, and then I'm good for a while.

Chocolate is directly linked to MODERN human slavery. The majority of the world's chocolate (cocoa) comes from the Ivory Coast and supports human slavery. There is a blog post (with links at the bottom for sources) about it here...
http://www.therussellfamily.org/~cathy/?p=12

So if you limit yourself to buying only organic or fair trade chocolate, the price goes up a little and that helps too.

What does Cargill have to do with this? (I don't click on links I don't know or trust)

Cargill is the suppler of coco to Hersey Mars  candy,ect

cargill works with the african govnernment

the government is inslaving the people

cargill is the biggest private owned busness in the US

We Need To Boycott all of them

The profits each side derives from this trade are fundamental to understanding why the main protagonists have not shown greater commitment to solving the political crisis over the past four and a half years. On the government side, the national cocoa institutions, the majority of which were set up after President Gbagbo came to power in 2001, have directly contributed at least 10.6bn CFA (US$20.3m) to the war effort. The big cocoa and coffee exporters' union, the Groupement Professionnel des Exportateurs de Café-Cacao (GEPEX), whose members include multinational companies such as Cargill and European companies such as ED & FMan Holdings Ltd, was represented on the board of the Bourse du Café et Cacao (BCC), one of the national cocoa institutions that decided to make this contribution to the war effort (Section 5.1.1). The country's president, Laurent Gbagbo, and his entourage, who retain control of the national cocoa and financial institutions, have tapped into the profits from the industry, using at least 20bn CFA (US$38.5m) of cocoa revenues to finance their war effort (in addition to the 10.6bn CFA mentioned above). As one insider said: "Of course the government used the cocoa money to buy weapons. Their only mistake is trying to hide it. They should have been open about it."(

Cocoa-exporting companies need to operate in a transparent way and publish the payments they make to the Ivorian government and cocoa institutions. In the government-controlled zone, companies, including American multinationals such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill, continue to trade without appearing to question the use or misuse of the significant taxes and levies they pay to the government and cocoa bodies. Publishing their payments would contribute to improving the management of cocoa revenues by the government and the cocoa institutions, as well as increasing accountability of the government to the people of Côte d'Ivoire, who have the right to know how their natural resources are being used.

INformation from the  Relielweb .This is all new news to me I was aware that there was slavary in suddan but it never dawned on me I was fueling there cause   Thanks Cathy

jamila : Have you heard of  ED@ FMAN Holdings ltd

I have heard of   Archer Daniels Midland

and Cargill is like I said

sorry to wreck the thread  will fix it later  more research to do

Cecilia  Who is the big suppler in Astraila

How about Canada   anybody?

The $13 billion U.S. chocolate industry is heavily dominated by just two firms– Hershey’s and M&M Mars–who control two-thirds of the market. Unfortunately, both of these companies fall into the category of those companies who use large amounts of Ivory Coast cocoa, and whose products are almost certainly produced in part by slavery.

Hershey Foods Corp., the nation’s largest chocolate-maker, says it is “shocked” and “deeply concerned” that its products, such as Hershey’s Kisses, Nuggets, Hershey chocolate bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, may be made with cocoa produced by child slaves. The company, which has a long history of involvement with children, says it is deeply embarrassed by revelations of indirect involvement with child slavery. (Hershey Foods, which has a market capitalization on Wall Street of $8.4 billion, is affiliated with a school for orphaned and disadvantaged children, established in 1909 by company founder Milton S. Hershey and his wife Catherine.)

M&M Mars and Hershey Foods Corp. are not alone. Other companies whose chocolate is almost certainly tainted with child slavery include: ADM Cocoa, Ben & Jerry’s, Cadbury Ltd., Chocolates by Bernard Callebaut, Fowler’s Chocolate, Godiva, Guittard Chocolate Company, Kraft, Nestle, See’s Candies, The Chocolate Vault, and Toblerone. While most of these companies have issued condemnations of slavery, and expressed a great deal of moral outrage that it exists in the industry, they each have acknowledged that they use Ivory Coast cocoa and so have no grounds to ensure consumers that their products are slavery-free

Companies like Mars, Hershey, and Nestle often say that there is no way they can control the labor practices of their suppliers. But there are other chocolate companies who manage to do so, and it would seem that if the bigger companies really wanted to reform problems in the supply chain, they have the power and ability to do so.

There are in fact many chocolate companies who only use cocoa that has definitively not been produced with slave labor. These companies include Clif Bar, Cloud Nine, Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Denman Island Chocolate, Gardners Candies, Green and Black’s, Kailua Candy Company, Koppers Chocolate, L.A. Burdick Chocolates, Montezuma’s Chocolates, Newman’s Own Organics, Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, Rapunzel Pure Organics, and The Endangered Species Chocolate Company.

At present, no organic cocoa beans are coming from Ivory Coast, so organic chocolate is unlikely to be tainted by slavery. Newman’s Own Organics is one of the largest of the slavery-free companies. The company’s chocolate is purchased through the Organic Commodity Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It comes from Costa Rica where the farms are closely monitored.

this has been a busy discussion.  Nothing like the topic of chocolate to get people talking.

I appreciate all of the information added here by all of you.

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Cathy & Tom you have given the best reasons not to eat ordinary chocolate.

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I have to say that I like chocolate too and now mostly eat raw cacao.  See our folder on this: Raw Chocolate - Yum!

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Well Tom as for making icing with it is still  on my list of things to do.  We do have a folder with lots of recipes in tho Raw Chocolate Recipes

That's a lot of information to take in. I don't know where the chocolate used by Canadian companies comes from - couldn't find anything in my quick Google search, but mgiht look again later.

I'll stick with the organic 70% cocoa stuff. Which I found an unopened bar of in our pantry... one I bought months ago!

I  agree   we could just change the name of the thread to " ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT THAT M&M"

Im running my bath water now for 20 min soak                                      where dose epson salt come from?

nevertheless I feel something good is going to come out of this thread.

I think keeping the thread with the original theme is important - there are probably a lot of people out there who are looking for advice on the same thing, and will come to this thread for that advice. Maybe a further thread about the "Are you sure you want that M&M" getting into the ethical, ecological, and whatever else side of chocolate might be an idea.

Here's info on epsom salts:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-epsom-salts.htm

I think there's info on using epsom salts on Care2 too.

Tom, we don't have any chocolate imported from Ed Hoffman Ltd - our cacao goods come usually from eastern countries or from european countries - mostly Switzerland, Austria and Germany. But I remember with nostalgia the fantastic chocolate I bought back in Arizona...

Hi, there! My name is Cecilia, I am argentinian, but I've been living in Mexico for the last two years, and, THANK GOD there is plenty chocolate in here. You needn't buy M&M or Hershey to eat chocolate, all you have to do is go to a store with Oaxaca products, and you will have GREAT chocolate, even to fix some "mole". I believe it's a good idea to have some chocolate at home, but you have to be very carefull with how much you eat. Like somebody said some days before "everything with moderation".

Yes, Magnesium deficiency can cause chocolate cravings - I take magnesium capsules for that too, but the baths are wonderful! they can also help you get over a cold if you put baking soda and H2O2 in, but that's another thread...

The other things I've eaten are raisins and dates when the chocolate cravings are overwhelming BUT I have noticed as many people here that a good dark 70% chocolate will satisfy much faster than M&Ms or Hershey's - there is too much other junk in those products.

Thank you. That was very helpful. I didn't buy the m & m's but I think the answer is to throw them out! And I'll check out the magnesium. Best, Susan

A shame to waste them, Susan, but I kind of understand why you'd do that.

Thanks for all the great info, I enjoy getting info directly from the members

because I am aware of the way the media will mesage the truth about a product that they have INTEREST in  $$$

thanks again

Yes unfrotuantely there is so much done in this world for the sake of $$$.

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I love this discussion.

So the other day I was on the spot at the dentist's office handed a bill for $1080 for just that morning of work.....I went into shock as it was not at all what I was expecting. 

You may be wondering....what has this to do with chocolate.....well all I wanted was a piecxe of chocolate afterwards....instead I had a piece of carrot cake...not much better as it was full of sugar but it was comfort food.

Dentist  what a concept :

taxes and death  some people just got it like that 

sorry about your pain  ( in your mouth and in your pocket ) 

I don't normally crave sweets, in general, but if I spy Chocolate covered strawberries, I can't stop. Like them with a glass of wine.

Do you have a Chocolate Urge?

yes! but I love chocolate and now I am very selective on what I buy. Aldi sells the best chocolate I have ever tasted. Its Belguim chocolate and excellent quality but with this comes the best price too. Those who have an Aldi store will know exactly what I mean. Mosher chocolate in the dark choc with Orange as well as the choc Mousse is 200% yummmmmmmooh I have rationed myself now and I guess I did before too but their chocolate is to ' die for'.

Peanut butter and honey....fights the urge and fills you up.  Well, it does it for me.  Yummmm

I don't think an Epsom Salts soak would do it for me if I was really craving chocolate. Peanut butter and honey are good and so is PB and molasses, but when ya gotta have chocolate, ya gotta have chocolate and nothing beats the crunch of peanut M&Ms. Yes, chocolate is good for you and so are peanuts. They have fiber and protein. If you don't have enough control to dole out a small portion from a big bag just go buy the little ones, one at a time of course. Then sit down and relax and savor each one, refuse to feel guilty about enjoying something so delightful and see how much better you feel. Gotta be good for your blood pressure. LOL. Since I lost my daughter in 1988, I no longer sweat the small stuff, and this is defintely small stuff. Be nice to yourself and others and if you feel like indulging a chocolate urge don't beat yourself up over it if you can't resist. Life is too short to for that!

My thoughts about chocolate is again all about moderation.  And the maid culpert in chocolate is all the sugar even when it is dark chocolate.

Yes peanut butter and honey....yum.

You are so right Kay no point in feeling guilty....if you are having some you might as well thoroughly enjoy it.

Ah yes the sugar... drats! But if you learn to read the nutritional panels on all packaged food n drink you will quickly see how much toxins/artificial sweeteners is in each product. However, with chocolate I will NEVER EVER buy chocolate that is sugar free even if I am a diabetic. No never.... but if you do consciously read and learn the nutritional panels you will quickly find there are lower sugar chocolates as well as lower carbs. B/c Aldi stores are the only stores that listen and are proactive on giving the consumer a better healthy choice I have to agree, their chocolates are far less in sugars and as I said taste sensational...oh the orange/choc is to die for as well as the choc mousse.

I dont eat peanut butter and very little honey.

Orange chocolate sounds wonderful.  I would definitely run down to an Aldi if we had one over here.  Actually diabetic chocoltes are not tasty at all and, if we have just a small amount, it usually doesn't matter.  It's just hard to stop!

There’s so much research out there saying how healthy chocolate is. I believe the research did not take into account all the sugar added to the chocolate treats that most people eat. This means that not only are we eating sugar that will depress our immune system, but we are adding fattening calories.

It’s true that cocoa powder in the dried form has beneficial effects:

1. Increased vascular reactivity.
2. Improved arterial compliance.
3. Increased HDL-C levels.
4. Decreased oxidation of LDL.
5. Reduced insulin resistance.

(According to Clinicaltrials at the University of Utah)

Notice this refers to cocoa powder which has no sugar of any type in it.

More Cocoa Health Benefits:

1. Lowers cholesterol, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 2003. (The white chocolate consumers, the control group in this study, experienced no health benefits.)
2. It is good for your skin; the flavonoids found in dark chocolate offer some protection from UV damage.
3. May improve your ability to see in low-contrast situations, such as poor weather according to study, from England’s University of Reading in 2011.
4. The fiber in chocolate has been shown to reduce the rate of colorectal cancer. It may even slow dementia.
5. Cocoa has anti-clotting, blood-thinning properties (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition).
6. It has been shown to repair liver cells after alcohol consumption!
7. It has been shown to help stimulate insulin, thus stopping the insulin resistance that can lead to diabetes.
8. The ingredient phenylethylamine that gives chocolate the reputation of being the ‘love food’ raises serotonin and dopamine level, which stimulates the nervous system, and even raises libido.
9. Could keep you from coughing, according to doctors at the British National Health Service.
10. Chocolate helps with Math, according study in Northumbria University in the UK.
11. Women who ate more than 45 grams of chocolate a week had a 20 percent lower risk of stroke than women who treated themselves to fewer than 9 grams of the sweet stuff, according to a 2011 Swedish study.
12. Chocolate eaters have lower stress levels finds Live Science Stress Study.

What Kind of Chocolate to Eat:

• If buying chocolate, check the ingredients; do not buy it if it has refined sugar such as cane sugar, brown sugar, or fructose.
• Also, stay away from chocolates made with sugar alcohol or artificial sweeteners; these have many toxic side effects.
• Even the chocolate made with healthy sugars and fats is best taken in moderation.
• Lastly, but extremely important: buy fair trade chocolate. There is “…a vast gulf between the children who eat chocolate on their way to school in North America and those who have no school at all, who must, from childhood, work to survive. The children who struggle to produce the small delights of life in the world I come from have never known such pleasure, and most likely, they never will.” – From Bitter Chocolate, by Carol Off

I have been making my own chocolate with healthy ingredients for a few years now and never eat the commercially made stuff. 

Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/is-chocolate-good-for-you.html#ixzz2KMNhuGtF 

It's great to know  that chocolate CAN  be good for you.  I have been able to taste some of Diana's home made chocolate (that is made from stright cocoa ) and it tastes amazing! Much better than the commerical stuff that is filled with sugar and lots of bad oils.  I've also seen her MAKE it and its is surprisingly simple.

Well, I usually just stick to dark chocolate, when my magnesium level is fine, I don't get these urges too ofter. Still, they happen...

We have been testing individuals for over 20 years for various food sensitivities. Since everyone was saying that dark chocolate is better for you we started testing it many years back.

I have not seen a single person whose energy was imrproved by dark chocolate. I assume it is the white sugar and crappy oils. The only chocolate that we have tested that does help a person's health is that VERY EXPENSIVE raw chocolate sweetened with fruit but also HOMEMADE chocolate like Diana was explaining about made with stevia and healthy oils. The homemade is of course a fraction of the price.

Great news! This is an Eye Opner! Thanks! 

Yes it is interesting how wrong much of the info out there is.

Now that I make my own sugar free healthy chocolate the bought stuff just does not taste good to me any more. Too much sugar.

STEP AWAY from the chocolate and NO ONE GETS HURT!

(People are addicted to chocolate!)

Lets face the facts any chocolate is bad news with high saturated fat ,sugar.Its bad full stop.

Chocolate is really really good and I love them too , but I think the best way to fight the urge is self dicipline and moderation. 

" chocolate is really good " as it reads just above:

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you hit the nail on the head,  indeed it´s hard not to give in to temptation given the countless sorts and flavours chocolate offers, so yes, self discipline is the only way to steer clear and curb one´s palate whose " victim " we often are...but that´s the drawback of a sedentary society that we´ve been for 50 years or more and that comes with all that... to cave in to temptation is not seldom the result of being alone...so here again, self discipline is what´s called for or a 2-hours´ walk 4 or 5 days a week, then one can allow oneself  a bar 2 or 3 times a week, (if enough liquid alongside)...but there is good chocolate too on the market...

I do agree. It's not bad to give in to the urge once in a while but we have to be cautious on how much we already have..