Halloween. The kick-off to the season of binging and feasting. When your ghosts, goblins and superheroes come home with a pillowcase filled with your candy favorites or you've bought one of those Costco sacks of mini-chocolate bars, how can you make a healthy choice?
As I commented to my teenaged daughter, "Define healthy." When my 16-year old dumped her stash on the kitchen table, we decided to go through the ingredient lists. Bah humbug!
Since GMOs have been in the news and in our consciousness, we started with a search for soy and soy derivatives. We were unable to find a single candy without soy lechitin or labeling denoting ingredients including "soy products." Soy lechitin is an emulsifier derived by chemical or mechanical separation during soybean oil production. In simple English, emulsifiers keep the cocoa and cocoa butter from separating in many of your favorite chocolate candies, from Hershey bars to Heath Bars, Butterfingers, Three Musketeers and Milky Way. Why should we worry about soy lechitin? According to the website Fooducate, unless a food is designated as organic, the odds are it's derived from genetically modified soy. If you're on the fence about the safety of GMOs, check out my previous blogs or watch "Genetic Roulette" on You Tube.
Disappointed that we were unable to find any chocolate favorites without soy, we moved on to candy choices recommended by more than a few weight loss articles and websites. If we're weighing the options, low calorie and low fat doesn't necessarily equal healthy. Remember the 90s when we eschewed extra virgin olive oil only to binge on Red Vines and Snack Well cookies? Our collective BMI and pants sizes went up faster than your portfolio during a bull market!
Let's take a look at one of the "lower fat" options straight from the candy pile. Six Tootsie Roll midgies weigh in at 140 calories with 3 g of fat. Nothing some extra treadmill time can't handle, right? The problem isn't in the calories in vs calories out. It's in the ingredients. Sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, condensed skim milk, cocoa whey, soya lechitin, and natural and artificial flavors. For starters, we have the GMO factor. When sugar isn't listed as pure cane, it invariably is derived from sugar beets, one of the top GMO crops. Corn syrup, soybean oil, soya lechitin? Bingo! More of the same. Corn syrup is essentially corn starch converted with enzymes to form a sweetener less expensive than sugar. Corn, the commodity bankrolled by our friendly government and you've got it, likely GMO. Partially hydrogenated oil? AKA trans fat! There's little disagreement in the medical community that trans fats do a one-two punch on your cholesterol, increasing your LDL or "bad" cholesterol while lowering your HDL or "good cholesterol." An iceberg wedge with blue cheese dressing followed by a juicy Porterhouse might just be a better option!
I could probably write a book about the harmful ingredients in candy but I suspect you've gotten the point.
Am I suggesting you pass out celery sticks and raisins to Trick or Treaters? Nope. For some, chocolate is a food group and a panacea for all that ails. Binging on chocolate or some other comfort food isn't going to solve any problems. Nevertheless, I believe in moderation and choosing your temptations wisely.
So, if chocolate is calling your name, select organic dark chocolate such as Green & Black's Organic Chocolate, Kopali Organics Chocolate Cacao Nibs available on Amazon.com or Endangered Species Organic Dark Chocolate with Almonds.
As Charles M. Schulz once said, "All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt." Just make it organic, dark chocolate!
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