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This Easter Don't Passover The Chocolate

by: ty mccauslin, m.s. | published: 04 01, 2010

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How Sweet It Is!

M’mmm, Easter's almost here, which means delicious chocolate bunnies, cream eggs, jellybeans and sweet satisfying marshmallow chicks are all readily available fair game.

Yes to the dismay of psycho nutritionists and fat police everywhere: It’s good for you!

Your eyes are not deceiving you. The delicious conclusion from research conducted around the world on a wide variety of sweet treats proves that consumed in moderation, you really can have your Easter basket and devour the contents guilt free.

This especially applies to Easter, when candy-crazed consumers will willingly stimulate the economy to the tune of nearly $2 billion--making it the second biggest holiday of the year for confectionery purchases--behind Halloween and just ahead of CHRIST-mas and Valentine's Day.

Sweet Nothings

So the next time some over-bearing, health conscious fanatic, family member, medical quack, super model, Obama-care loving lunatic or know-it-all bureaucrat chastises your desire to indulge here’s a short list of responses you can shove down their throats to melt their unfounded accusations away like M&M’s in the hot summer sun:

Candy does not contribute a large percentage of fat and sugar to the overall American diet. In fact, less than 2 percent of the fat and 10 percent of the sugar in our diets are supplied by candy.
Chocolate is packed with high-quality polyphenol antioxidants that may reduce the risk of developing cancer and heart disease.

Sugar in candy does not cause hyperactivity in children. Despite widespread mis-belief to the contrary, studies conducted at Vanderbilt University and the University of Iowa College of Medicine found no evidence that sugar has an adverse effect on children’s behavior.

Stearic acid, the main saturated fatty acid in chocolate, does NOT raise blood cholesterol levels.

Jelly beans, gum drops and hard candies are not high in calories. One butterscotch disc contains only 20 calories. Eight gum drops or eight jelly beans (the equivalent of one ounce) contain 115 calories. Even better, most of these calories are fat and cholesterol-free!

Chocolate is not addictive, nor an aphrodisiac. It’s more likely chocolate’s unique taste and sensory properties that make chocolate the single most craved food in the United States. Although chocolate is supposedly “loaded” with phenylethylamine, a substance rumored to enhance romantic feelings, the average chocolate bar contains less than one milligram. Salami and cheese possess even greater amounts of this “funky cold medina.”

Cocoa and chocolate are rich in minerals the body needs, including magnesium, copper and iron.

Allergies to chocolate are extremely rare with the more likely allergens being milk, egg, peanut or tree nut components of chocolate products—not the chocolate itself.

Chocolate and candy do not cause obesity. Once again, it is the quantity of foods eaten, combined with the level of physical activity and underlying genetics, which determine whether or not a person will gain weight.

You would have to eat more than a dozen milk chocolate bars to consume the same amount of non-addictive caffeine contained in one eight ounce cup of coffee.

Chocolate does not cause migraine headaches, which instead appear to be linked to hormones, stress and perhaps some other foods. A recent study at the University of Pennsylvania tested 63 women plagued by chronic headaches and largely exonerated chocolate as a common culprit.

Finally be sure to inform your dentist, chocolate contains tannins, substances that seem to prevent cavity-causing bacteria from sticking to teeth and gums, perhaps even helping to suppress cavity development.

“There are really no good or bad foods,” assures Riva Touger-Decker, Ph.D, R.D., FADA and an assistant professor at New Jersey University of Medicine and Dentistry. “According to the American Dietetic Association, eaten in moderation, candy can certainly fit any diet or lifestyle. What’s more important is that we all consume an overall nutritionally balanced diet and brush and floss our teeth at least twice a day.”

Escape from Never-Ever Land

In both junior and senior high school the author was exposed to a nicotine deprived science teacher who almost every day enlightened his students with a piece of blatantly obvious, safety information such as “never-ever” go swimming in a thunder storm, “never-ever” stick your head in a heated oven,” or “never-ever” strike a match near an open can of gas,”—never forgetting to close with this “don’t shoot your eye out” inspired warning: It’ll kill ya!!!

Much like chocolate and other types of candy, far less plausible are the countless scare tactic driven, supposedly scientific and purposely exaggerated studies warning “never-ever” drink caffeinated coffee or Coca Cola, “never-ever” eat red meat, or “never-ever” consume an entire gallon of ice cream in one sitting because they too will “kill ya.”

Before putting up police tape or permanently exiling the current contents of your refrigerator to “Never-Ever Land,” be sure to remember that to never-ever freely, yet responsibly, partake in the foods and beverages you love most will probably “kill ya” anyway. Or at the very least, bore you to death once you come to the realization that it’s not easy or completely healthy eating only greens and washing them down with near-tasteless water.

Your Body Is Not the Nanny State’s Temple or Bank Account

Wherever you weigh in either physically or philosophically, your dietary decisions constitute an exercise in personal choice that should neither be rewarded, nor "sin" taxed by any revenue-addicted level of government.

Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1759, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

If Americans refuse to draw a line in the sand when it comes to taxing our most personal choices regarding beer, potato chips, candy, chocolate, Coca Cola, coffee or red meat, we will irrevocably fail Dr. Franklin’s liberty litmus test.

As a result, our once overflowing land of milk and bee-producing honey will be replaced with a super welfare-sized, Nanny State, approved vegetarian menu supplemented by government cheese, bread, and sterile tasting water.

Just as our country’s Founding Fathers fully understood, our fundamental freedoms are most often lost when the populace at large voluntarily surrenders the reigns of personal responsibility in deciding:

How are earnings are redistributed and spent (a.k.a. Obama-care)

What we should eat or drink,

The automobiles we’re allowed drive,

What to read and, ultimately what to think to politicians, government regulators and other special interest groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving--who spend way too much time gorging at the taxpayer trough.

These "all-knowing," "all-caring," prohibition-inspired, taxing behavior-driven representatives from the Nanny State are all too happy to exploit their mindless subjects to achieve even more power and bottomless war chests to keep that power.

So ask yourself? What do you prefer this Easter, America's current free market, nutritional distribution system featuring supermarkets and restaurant chains or socialist soup kitchens, bread lines and meals on wheels from the womb to the tomb?