This is how much chocolate I've eaten in the past three years. But not this kind of chocolate. Not this kind of chocolate. Because then Brian Johnson speaks about the benefits of cocoa powder, especially the one that follows very strict purchasing guidelines that he also happens to sell exactly.
And the cost isn't cheap. For the day of this recording, one bag of his cocoa powder cost 41 bucks in the US and 47 pounds in the UK. But this is very confusing because Brian says that everyone should eat chocolate every day, not cocoa powder. And chocolate is much tastier and much cheaper than cocoa powder. So which would you buy?
And if you're like me, you want to save money and actually enjoy life when possible. And you may wonder, will you live longer choosing chocolate instead of cocoa powder? That's exactly what we're going to discover today. Today we'll look into the science of that. We're going to analyze actually Brian's own study.
This video is part of our Brian's Blueprint Hacking Series, achieving similar results of Brian's Blueprint for Longevity and Health at a fraction of the cost and the lifestyle education. Let's hack the biohacker, saving money while living longer. Let's start with the science, cacao for longevity. Now we're going to use Brian's own study from his description of his video.
This is the only study he provided that targeted exactly longevity. Let's examine this study closely. The name of the study is Relationship between Chocolate Consumption and Overall Cause-Specific Mortality.
I'm quoting. Study with total of 20,111 men who were recruited between 1985 and 1988 and followed through until 2015. So, what we have here, they analyzed data from other studies and included 27,000 men over many, many years. They tracked how many people died depending on their chocolate consumption. This means they measure the overall risk of death.
Why is this important for longevity? If you reduce your risk of death, you should expect to live longer, naturally. But also, the risk of death is a number that encompasses all the types of diseases in simply one number.
And this also suggests a direct effect on aging, if you want to stay younger, not just to live longer. So that's important to understand. If a food or a supplement reduces your risk of dying from any disease, it is very likely it's going to help your body to stay healthier and younger for much longer. Make sense? Now let's get back to Brian's study.
The researchers discovered, I'm quoting,"...statistically significant inverse association between chocolate consumption and risk of overall mortality."Meaning, more chocolate the participants consumed, the lower the risk of death. Specifically, they found 10 to 12 percent decrease in overall mortality, which can be directly translated into longevity and good health as we age. Now, Now, was this study conducted on cocoa powder?
No, it was conducted on chocolate. And both high quality dark chocolate and cocoa powder will have polyphenols, the real youth juice that is going to deliver these anti-mortality, pro-longevity benefits. Now what's the difference between these two products? Pure dark chocolate is a combination of cacao powder and cacao solids, while cocoa powder is only cacao solids.
And the truth of the matter is, if you try to reduce your overall carb intake, pure 99% cacao dark chocolate. has fewer carbs than cocoa powder. Of course, once sugar is added to the chocolate, it increases the carbs. But then you may ask, what about the fat content? You'll discover today how to eat chocolate without gaining weight.
The important thing is that both cocoa powder and dark chocolate contain cacao polyphenol content that is responsible for the longevity benefits. So the study covered chocolate. An interesting anecdotal story here. If you ask the longest living documented person, Jeanne Clément, if she were alive today, she would agree with that.
I'm quoting from this article. Jean Clamart lived long to a heavy reliance on chocolate, olive oil, and cheap red wine. And I'm also adding extreme longevity genes. But the lesson here, it would seem that chocolate didn't hurt her longevity, nor did cheap red wine, quote unquote.
By the way, cheap red wine has more polyphenols than the expensive aged red wine. So the rich don't live longer when they consume this expensive aged red wine, nor does eating more in expensive restaurants. Now, getting back to our discussion. The longest living person ever consumed chocolate, not cocoa powder.
And also the study Brian's mentioned talked about chocolate, not cocoa powder. And by the way, high quality dark chocolate costs a fraction of the price. But Brian is right.
Chocolate candy is full of sugar, which will take away the cacao polyphenols longevity benefits. Just to understand how sugar affects your longevity, let's hear Dr. David Sinclair, aging researchers from Harvard. Really, sugar is something that is known to be toxic.
Sucrose, which forms glucose, will attach to your body's components. Your proteins will become what's called glycated, and that's known to drive aging as well. And I'm adding from my 17 years of research into this, that if you want to live longer, you want to reduce the damage that is caused to your body, but also increase the repair.
And sugar also causes damage, but also down-regulates the repair processes that keeps you young and healthy. So you do want to minimize sugar intake in order to slow down aging. So how do you do that while gaining all the longevity?
The benefits of dark chocolate. This leads us to the five steps of eating chocolate for longevity. Here are the five simple steps First focus on dark chocolate not milk chocolate our goal here to get the cacao polyphenols Dark chocolate is where the concentration of polyphenols is the highest compared to other types of chocolate milk and milk Chocolate offers no longevity benefits and many people will have undiagnosed inflammatory reaction to milk this inflammatory reaction can reduce your longevity, even if it's undiagnosed.
And the darkness in dark chocolate suggests the polyphenol content. So you want to get dark chocolate. Now here is a cool tip. Dark chocolate stains teeth and clothes.
Is this bad? Not really. Did you notice that if a food stains your clothes, it's more likely to be healthy for you?
This suggests polyphenol plant power. Green tea, for example, stains because of its polyphenols. Red wine stains more than white wine because of the polyphenols. And dark chocolate stains more than white chocolate, so choose dark chocolate. Second, invest in organic chocolate.
You see, there are foods that are not crucial to buy organic, but with dark chocolate it is crucial. Why? Cacao plants from which dark chocolate is produced are grown in non-westernized countries, with possibly less regulation on food growing. Therefore, the more regulation we can put in our food in this situation, the better. and also cacao plant is a heavily sprayed crop and we want ideally to minimize the impact of spraying and pesticides on our foods and our bodies an organic dark chocolate is going to target both of these issues it will increase regulation in the food that we eat but also reduces the impact on pesticides in our bodies so invest in organic dark chocolate it's worth it step number three gradually increase your cacao percentage Dark chocolate has two main ingredients, as we said, cacao and sugar.
And you know already that sugar isn't good for you and it's going to shut down your repair genes that are going to keep you healthy. Another problem with combining sugar in our dark chocolate is that dark chocolate contains fat. And sugar, what does it do? It prevents the burning of this very fat.
So the less sugar you consume with your chocolate, the easier you make it for your body to burn this fat. This means you're going to get both longevity benefits of the polyphenols without gaining weight. You should know, any portion that is not cacao in your dark chocolate, you can safely assume that is sugar.
How do you know that? You simply look at the cacao percentage of your dark chocolate. So, for example, if you buy 70% cacao dark chocolate, you're probably going to get almost 30% sugar. But consuming 30% sugar in your food is a lot.
Therefore, we want to go higher in the cacao percentage. And you want to go as high as possible, as much as you can handle. So you're going to get less sugar.
and more polyphenols. If you cannot stand high cacao dark chocolate, don't worry. Personally, I started with 80% cacao dark chocolate.
After a few years, I progressed to 85, 90, and today I only eat 99% dark chocolate, which is in essence sugar-free. Because 1% is usually lecithin, which gives the dark chocolate its milky, solid texture. I love my chocolate and I'm laughed by my wife for enjoying this bitterness. And I can tell you one thing, it's the dark chocolate and not the sugar that gives you the good mood when you consume chocolate. So you're going to get all the good mood effect and also the longevity effect the more you go higher in the cacao percentage.
And with time, let your taste buds get accustomed to this bitterness. It really is tasty and the texture is amazing. Enjoy the cacao taste without the sweetness on sugar. Another top tip. What about sugar-free chocolates or chocolates that use sugar substitutes?
Some companies promote sugar-free chocolate and replace the sugar with other sugar replacement. One thing you must be aware is reading the label. For example, many companies replace the sugar with maltitol. This sugar replacement will cause your body aging damage too.
And it's not a proper sugar replacement. Instead, if you buy dark chocolate with sugar replacements, try to look for chocolates with stevia or erythritol. Anyhow, I'm not a big fan of adding too much sweetness to our chocolate because it's going to cause your body to crave sweets later.
And you don't want to get sugar in the back door by stimulating the sweet tooth. Step number four. I suggest having a daily quota of your dark chocolate. Eating more dark chocolate is not better. You're already maximizing all the longevity benefits around 30 to 40 grams of dark chocolate per day.
If you don't eat 99% dark chocolate like me, you're also going to get sugar mixed with saturated fat that can cause you to gain weight. Therefore, on this step, I suggest that you decide on a daily quota, daily amount that you set beforehand and have a clear boundary how much you can eat. Also, in my experience with my clients, setting a quota of how much you can eat will actually make you enjoy your chocolate more.
And remember, eat your chocolate slowly. Let it melt in your mouth. This is a deeply sensory indulgent experience. There you have it, your daily treat.
Step number five. You can bake with dark chocolate. Another cool method to include dark chocolate while minimizing sugar is in your baking.
This is how you do it. For your baking, you can buy high cacao percentage dark chocolate and add natural, less damaging form of sugar such as erythritol, allulose, monk fruit or stevia. This could potentially eliminate all the sugar from your chocolate baking. Secondly, this method also allows you to provide organic high cacao dark chocolate to your family, including your kids.
So, incorporating dark chocolate into your family's nutrition allows everyone to enjoy more sweetness without the fattening and damaging effects of sugar. All by getting the polyphenols from cacao. Exactly like the $2 million product of Brian Johnson.
Now, if you too find longevity fascinating like me, at the end of the day, you need to remember that Brian's blueprint is a blueprint of his own body, not yours. If Brian has a genetic variation that you don't have, you're not going to benefit so much from his blueprint. This is why we need a more custom-made, tailored approach that is based on science and not a one-person's body. And ideally, you want habits and protocols that don't cost $2 million a year.
In future videos, we will cover more of Brian Johnson's blueprint hacking. Subscribe if you want more of these videos.