- Tom Brady eats dark chocolate at the end of every gameday, according to his wellness site.
- Dark chocolate is regarded as a healthy treat, as it is high in nutrients and lower in sugar.
- Still, it is a candy and should be consumed in moderation, according to dietitians.
Tom Brady recently shared that he finishes every gameday with a couple of squares of dark chocolate.
Brady's gameday meal plan, which was detailed in a post on his personal wellness brand TB12, includes a few squares of antioxidant rich dark chocolate as an after-dinner treat.
Dark chocolate is popular in wellness circles for it's reported health benefits — it contains a strong concentration of cocoa beans, which are filled with flavonols. Flavonols can help with, inflammation reduction, lowering cholesterol, and increased blood flow throughout the body.
However, there is some fierce debate about how much flavonol-induced benefit you can reap from chocolate alone. Some believe its benefits are exaggerated and it should be treated like any other candy.
"You'd have to eat an awful lot of chocolate to make a difference," Marion Nestle, a highly respected nutrition professor at New York University, told the Washington Post.
Dietitians agree that dark chocolate does have some antioxidants and nutrients — but in small quantities, and coupled with sugar
Dark chocolate, which has a higher percentage of cacao and a lower percentage of milk and sugar than other types of chocolate, contains high amounts of flavonols — antioxidants that come from plants.
Those flavonols are the source of all the potential benefits of the treat.
Registered dietitian Bonnie Taub-Dix told Insider that, in addition to antioxidants, dark chocolate can help support better circulation by improving blood flow and lowering blood pressure.
Taub-Dix added that one quarter of a dark chocolate bar can also provide one ounce of fiber.
But that nutritional value of dark chocolate depends on the its quality, registered dietitian Alix Turoff told Insider. In order for dark chocolate to be healthy, Turoff said, it must contain at least 70% cacao , which does not apply to all dark chocolate products.
Turoff added that a person can get even more of the nutrients that dark chocolate offers from just eating fruits and vegetables.
"I do think the benefits of dark chocolate are probably over hyped," Turoff told Insider. "It's sort of like the resveratrol in red wine... sure, there are benefits but when you're drinking a bottle of wine a night, you're undoing any small benefits of resveratrol."