Experts Share The Surprising Effects That Drinking Hot Chocolate Can Have On Your Health

There’s nothing quite like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day. As snow floats down outside of your window, you wrap your hands around your warm mug and settle in with a good book — what's cozier than that? But hot chocolate is more than just a cozy wintertime beverage. As it turns out, cocoa can have some surprising impacts on your health. The hidden ways hot chocolate can impact your overall wellness goes far deeper than chocolate and marshmallows...

A sugary treat

There’s so much more to know about hot chocolate than the fact that it tastes good — no matter how you drink it. Because even when you strip away the sugary toppings, such as marshmallows and whipped cream, you still have a pretty sweet beverage on your hands. But what does that mean for your health?

Revealing the truth about chocolate

Well, experts have looked into the health effects of this beloved beverage, and what they found was surprising. The researchers looked into chocolate and, in particular, they broke down the sweet stuff’s ingredients to see if the candy had any redeeming qualities. It was then that one part of the standard hot chocolate recipe caught their eye.

One particular ingredient

That one ingredient appears in lots of mugs of hot chocolate, too. So before you brew your next batch of the sweet stuff, read this. You’ll want to know exactly what it is you’re drinking as well as the effects that your favorite wintertime drink can have on your body. Of course, hot chocolate does have its shortcomings in the eyes of some health experts.

Milk vs. dark

There are a lot of varieties, though. On the one hand, you have milk chocolate. Its manufacturers say that it’s better than the alternatives because its namesake ingredient, milk, has both calcium and protein. On the other hand, dark chocolate fans say this variety is good for the body, as it contains both antioxidants and iron. Chocolate wars, who’d have thought it?