How Dark Chocolate Can Boost Your Workout

When we told you all about the benefits of dark chocolate a couple weeks ago, we mentioned that eating dark chocolate every day could actually boost your workout. Now, we want to share a few more details to let you know just how that’s possible. This research is very new and still being conducted, but it’s also pretty exciting. We’re always looking for more reasons to feel good about eating dark chocolate (not that we need more!) and this is just one more potential benefit that has us smiling.

According to the New York Times, scientists at the University of California in San Diego have been doing studies on the effects of dark chocolate on mice. They separated middle-aged, sedentary male mice into two groups and gave one group “a purified form of cacao’s primary nutritional ingredient, known as epicatechin,” which is a flavonol, twice a day. They gave the other group equal amounts of water. And then they made the mice work out (I’d love to see what kinds of kicks the mice were wearing!).

How do you make mice work out, you ask? Well, these researchers put the mice on a treadmill. And what they discovered was that the mice drinking water become exhausted more quickly than the mice that received the epicatechin. The mice that had exercised using epicatechin actually covered about 50% more distance than the control group. Crazy!

Of course, studies are still being conducted and mice are certainly not humans. But the idea that dark chocolate could help you boost your workout is a very interesting (and exciting!) one. As you probably know, benefits like these can only be found in dark chocolate, and not milk chocolate, since the processing in milk chocolate destroys the epicatechin.

What’s your favorite thing about dark chocolate?

And while you’re at it, check out our line of NuGo bars featuring REAL dark chocolate (and many of our other bars contain REAL dark chocolate, too!). And then go for a jog!