Reasons Chocolate makes you Fat.
1 We are conditioned to eat it for comfort. Parents offer it to their kids when they fall over. Later, we eat it when things go wrong or when we are watching a weepie video.
 
2 It is mega-high in calories. If lettuce was as comforting and delicious as chocolate, few people would be fat. But lettuce contains no fat and only three calories an ounce. Most women put on weight if they eat more than 2000 calories daily, so unless you exercise properly, just a little chocolate will push that daily total beyond a "safe" limit.
 
3 Chocs are not filling. Your body feels cheated when you replace a balanced meal with chocolate, so it craves more. Unless you go for the nutty kind, chocolate contains no fibre to make your tummy feel full. It is hard to tell when you've had enough.
 
4 It is socially acceptable to eat chocolate anywhere – on the street, at your desk or on a train. It is less messy to munch a Crunchie at a bus stop than a salad baguette.
 
5 It's all around us. You cannot leave home without seeing chocolate in the garage, at the supermarket check-out and in vending machines. It is hard to resist such temptation.
 
6 Chocolate gives a boost. Cocoa contains phenylethylamine, which produces euphoria. Chocolate contains a lot of sugar. When this sugar gets into your blood, it produces an instant high from insulin, released to deal with the rise in sugar. But ten minutes later the insulin level drops and you need another fix.
 
7 Chocolate can be a sex substitute. If your partner leaves, the phenylethylamine mentioned above is powerful enough to make you think chocolate will mend a broken heart.
 
8 Chocolate bars and ice cream are promoted as exciting, sexy and desirable. If you are coping with difficult kids and the house looks like a tip, a bar of chocolate seems very attractive.
 
9 Just before a period, you suffer fluid retention and mood swings and chocolate seems like a soothing drug. We need potassium at this time (and chocolate contains some), but a banana is a better source, has fewer calories and hardly any fat.
 
10 There are no taboos. Society doesn't frown on you for eating chocolate. If you sat in the pub drinking lager all day, people would talk. But stuffing Mars bars is seen as being OK.
 

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