Chocolate Calculator
Have you ever heard about health benefits of dark chocolate? We are sure you had, and thanks to our chocolate calculator you can quickly calculate what's the content of minerals, calories, fats, or sugar in white, milk, and dark chocolate. Select the chocolate type, enter the chocolate size - a bar, square, cup or any other amount you like - and have a look at all those satisfying values. Eating chocolate is beneficial for your health (of course in reasonable amounts), especially if you choose the dark chocolate with high cocoa solids content.
Health benefits of dark chocolate
There are many researches and studies on health benefits of dark chocolate. The most often described elements are the phytochemicals called flavonoids. Cocoa beans are a great source of flavonoids, which have antioxidant abilities. One research study by brasilian scientists found out, that high-quality dark chocolate can have four times more flavonoids than red wine which is a well known from antioxidant abilities. The flavonoids have many health benefits, such as:
- Improving blood flow and lowering blood pressure
- Protecting the skin against sun-induced damage
- Reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease
- Raising HDL and protecting LDL against oxidation, improving insulin sensitivity (check out our cholesterol tools: cholesterol ratio and cholesterol units calculator)
- Enhancing brain functions
Dark chocolate is also a great source of nutrients - in 100 grams you can find:
- 11.9 mg of iron, which is 66.1% of Daily Values(% DV) recommended by FDA
- 228 mg of magnesium (54.3% DV)
- 308 mg of phosphorus (24.6% DV)
- 1.9 mg of manganese (82.6% DV)
- 1.8 mg of copper (90% DV)
- and substantial amounts of selenium, potassium, phosphorus and zinc.
It's rather rare to eat one bar of chocolate per day, so if you want to check how many nutrients you can get from one row or square, use our chocolate calculator.
Milk, white and dark chocolate - nutrition facts
If you want to compare those three basic types of chocolate, you will definitely notice that dark chocolate has the highest nutritional value:
| Nutrients, minerals, flavonoids per 100g | Dark chocolate | Milk chocolate | White chocolate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | 599 kcal | 535 kcal | 539 |
| Total Carbohydrate | 45.8 g | 59.4 g | 59.2 g |
| Sugars | 24 g | 51.5 g | 59 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 10.9 g | 0.034 g | 0.2 g |
| Total Fat | 42.7 g | 29.7 g | 32.1 g |
| Saturated Fat | 24.5 g | 18.5 g | 19.4 g |
| Protein | 7.8 g | 7.6 g | 5.9 g |
| Cholesterol | 2 mg | 23 mg | 21 mg |
| Iron | 11.9 mg | 2.4 mg | 0.2 mg |
| Magnesium | 228 mg | 63 mg | 12 mg |
| Phosphorus | 308 mg | 208 mg | 176 mg |
| Manganese | 1.9 mg | 0.5 mg | 0 mg |
| Copper | 1.8 mg | 0.5 mg | 0.1 mg |
| Flavonoids | 1.16 mg | 0.7 mg | 0 mg |
Health benefits of dark chocolate are undeniable, especially considering it as an excellent natural source of iron and magnesium and lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease. It doesn't mean that you should eat bars of dark chocolate every day from now on. The balance is essential - you need to remember that advantages must be considered against the calories, saturated fat and sugar you’ll get from the chocolate.
By the way, have you seen our calories burned calculator? It can help in losing those calories you gained after reading about health benefits of dark chocolate!
How can I use the chocolate calculator?
It's really simple, give it a try!
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Choose the type of the chocolate. Let's pick the milk one.
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Select the size of the bar. For example, one row of standard EU chocolate bar (20 g).
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Enter the quantity for which you want to display the nutritional table. Assume we want to eat two rows of chocolate.
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Total weight and two tables will appear below! Now you know that 40 grams of milk chocolate contain 214 kcal, more than 18% of total daily fat and 10% of recommended copper intake per day.
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If your chocolate bar is not a standard one and doesn't appear in our drop-down menu, type its weight into the Total weight box - the chocolate calculator can deal with it.