Is dark chocolate a clean food?

darkangel45422

You people with your clean vs. unclean, healthy vs. unhealthy, when are you going to learn that food is food? There's nothing unhealthy about chocolate, be it dark, milk, or white. What makes a food "clean" anyway? There are only unhealthy quantities of food, not the food itself. Back to your debate of he inane. :yawn:

Rigger

Do you not think that getting a wide variety of nutrients, or anti-oxidants, etc. is important for health? Maybe not necessarily for weight loss (it's debatable at this point) but for just general human health? Eating unhealthy foods (or foods high in unhealthy/undesirable ingredients, etc. if you prefer) is either going to put you into excess eating or take room in your diet away from healthier foods. White chocolate for instance is less healthy than dark chocolate because it's more heavily processed and contains less of the healthful nutrients. Therefore for good health, you'd obviously prefer dark chocolate to white chocolate. Similarly, clean foods (not processed or not heavily processed, natural nutritious ingredients or natural foods, etc.) are by and large healthier than processed foods, and therefore for good health its preferable to eat clean.

I'm quite happy for chocolate and ice cream to take room in my diet away from "healthier" foods, because they taste so good that it's worth it :drinker:

and yes I do pay attention to macronutrients and micronutrients but ice cream and chocolate isn't going to cause me to become malnourished...

And most people will obviously try to make a balance between how much of their concentration in their diet is healthy foods and how much is on foods they love (though obviously in a lot of cases foods will be both healthy and loved, which are just awesomely convenient lol). And I never said it would make you malnourished to have unhealthy/less healthy foods sometimes, but there is a difference between saying (as the person I'd replied to did) that it doesn't matter what you eat, only how much calories you eat, and saying that occasionally having something that's unhealthy won't hurt you. I'm not saying food needs to be healthy 100% of the time, I merely meant that you can't ignore the healthiness of the food and concentrate entirely on calories if you want to be healthy.

This isn't middle school. There's no extra credit once you meet your nutritional needs.

Well, for one thing eating a diet of only Twinkies WON'T meet your nutritional needs, and for another, sure there is. In some cases there's no such thing as too much (or at least it's very difficult to achieve while still eating within your calorie goals), and getting as much nutrition from various sources is generally considered ideal. Besides, what do you consider your nutritional needs? Just your macros, or does that take into account all micros including antioxidants, phytonutrients, flavonoids, etc.? There are so many different things that play a part in health just in terms of what you eat that I really don't think it's correct to say that there's no difference between meeting your basic needs to stay alive/functioning relatively well and eating as optimally as you can. Obviously there are considerations other than just health at play in diet choices - food preferences, money, time, etc. - but if we're simply talking health wise, there IS actually extra credit for going above and beyond your basic, required to function nutritional needs.

The definition of "clean food" I am familiar with is "natural". So, unless the food exists in nature, it's not 100% clean.

But a food made from 100% natural ingredients could arguably be considered 'clean', in which case it would depend on the dark chocolate.

In my world, there are varying degrees of 'clean'.

So, I have a whole organic well fed and massaged chicken from the local co-op. I also have some salt, some lemons, and some thai chili pepper seeds. All of these things are 100% found in nature (well, except domestic chickens, really. We kind of made those from chickens we found in nature). I then put it in a bowl and mix it up and cook it. Is it as clean as it was before, or less clean? The final product (lemon and pepper cooked chicken) is not found in nature.

Of course that's still clean. It has "5 or less" ingredients. :huh:

gunpowder is clean then by this definition

sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal .... all found in nature and less than 3 ingredients. Even charcoal can occur naturally after a naturally occurring forest fire.

Does that mean I can eat gunpowder? I hear it creates an explosion of flavours on the tastebuds.....


(although I prefer this kind:)

You realize you've taken this argument to the absurd right? No one's saying that anything with less than 5 ingredients all found in nature is going to food or healthy. None of the ingredients in gunpowder are food nor safe for human consumption, so OBVIOUSLY you can't eat it. The argument for 'clean' eating still requires the natural ingredients to be FOOD. That really shouldn't need to be said....

jofjltncb6

Green & Black's 85% or GTFO.

Gidzmo

If it started out as white chocolate, then no. Otherwise, yes.

White chocolate is only white because it has no cocoa solids. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_chocolate#Classification

Also, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate#Blending

Dark chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, and (sometimes) vanilla;
Milk chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, milk or milk powder, and vanilla;
White chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, milk or milk powder, and vanilla.

I don't care much for dark chocolate, but I hear that it is good for you.