Despite the fact that chocolate syrup is a dessert item, many people are curious as to whether or not it contains any significant nutrition. As most of you are probably already aware, chocolate and cocoa both contain significant amounts of essential vitamins and minerals, all of which your body needs in order to stay healthy. In this quick article, we will dig into the chocolate syrup nutritional facts, as well as explore ways to help you pack the most nutritional value into your chocolate syrup as you can, despite it's sweet and sinful nature. Obviously I would never advocate sitting down and eating a whole bottle of chocolate syrup in one sitting, as it's healthy nutritional components are heavily countered by lots and lots of sugar, as well as some fat and cholesterol. So after reading through what the many advantages are to eating chocolate syrup in moderation, don't get the wrong idea about how much of it you should eat at once.
With regard to raw cocoa powder, which is usually the standard base for any chocolate syrup, there are many vitamins and minerals found in this. For starters, cocoa powder contains large amounts of protein, quite a bit of dietary fiber, a little bit of sodium. It also contains calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, manganese, selenium, vitamin K, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, folate, pantothenic acid, and choline. So as you see, cocoa powder by itself is quite healthy, with the exception that it does contain caffeine, and occasionally will contain trace amounts of lead. So it really only becomes unhealthy when you add sugar and or cream and milk to it to form a syrup, which is obviously where the fat, cholesterol, and other negative elements come from. However if you use honey or agave nectar in your syrup instead of white refined sugar, and water instead of milk, then it's quite healthy.
If you are interested in upping the nutritional value of your homemade chocolate syrup, then consider sweetening it with fresh fruit juices. If you have a juicer that you can use at home, then trying mixing you cocoa powder with fresh made strawberry juice, cherry juice, grape juice, peach juice, carrot juice, pineapple juice, blackberry juice, raspberry juice, orange juice, apple juice, or even watermelon juice. Fruit juice does contain sugar, but research has shown that these natural sugars are far healthier for your body than the heavily refined variety. You can also flavor your chocolate syrup with other juices, such as small amounts of pumpkin juice, spinach juice, cactus juice, mint leaf juice, any many others. Adding any fresh homemade juice to your chocolate syrup will absolutely pack in the nutrients, making your chocolate syrup more of a health food, than a dessert item. So break out the juicer and whip up some healthy syrup.
Another way to add more nutritional value to your chocolate syrup, is to create it with fresh ground spices, most of which are loaded with essential vitamins and minerals. For example you can use fresh ground cinnamon, fresh ground nutmeg, allspice, ground ginger, apple pie spice mix, a dash of chili powder, a dash of cayenne pepper, or even smoked paprika. Aside from the nutrients you will get from consuming these spices, most of these also have some medicinal properties that are known to alleviate various health ailments. To maximize the health benefits that you will receive from these spices, try to use the fresh ground variety as much as possible. Fresh ground cinnamon and nutmeg will also really get that chocolate syrup flavor popping and flourishing with all sorts of aromatic notes. That concludes this unique article, we hope that you learned something new about the nutritional value contained within chocolate syrup.
