The Challenge of a Healthy Diet

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Making healthy diet choices is a confusing business these days.  Just when I was trying to ease off sweet stuff, a panel of health officials came out with a list of the health benefits of eating dark chocolate.  Cocoa beans contain flavonoids, which have a blood pressure lowering effect and have potential benefits in reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes, while increasing libido to boot!

To optimize my heart health I also abandoned butter, even though I always felt that butter tasted better than margarine.  Now they tell me that the margarine I switched to is too high in transfatty acids, and may be also responsible for decreasing my immune response.  Butter advocates remind me that the few nutritional benefits of margarine had to be added when the margarine was synthesized.

One more life style switch I made as a result of yet another scientific paper was to substitute some of my coffee breaks with green tea breaks.  Since there is supposed to be so many carcinogens like dioxin in the food I eat, I was looking for some of the protection that can be found in the natural plant compounds that can short circuit dioxin's toxicity.  Studies indicate that some six of the antioxidants in green tea have the potential to block dioxins effect at its docking point within cells.

So next time you want to improve your diet, try dark chocolate with a cup of green tea.