Cocoa Butter: A Natural Fat and Cholesterol Neutral | Hershey Nutrition

A Natural Fat and Cholesterol Neutral

Despite chocolate's saturated fat content, studies show that eating chocolate has no effect on the level of potentially harmful cholesterol in your blood.

Why? Because not all saturated fats are created equal. The fat in chocolate comes from cocoa butter, the natural fat found in cocoa beans. (Milk chocolate has additional fat from milk.)

About 36 percent of the fat in the cocoa bean is "good fat" — either mono- or polyunsaturated fat, of which oleic acid (the fatty acid also abundant in olive oil) makes up the largest proportion. Of the saturated fat content in cocoa butter, over half comes from stearic acid. Stearic acid has been shown in numerous studies to have a neutral impact on blood cholesterol. In fact, the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommended that stearic acid should be excluded from other “cholesterol-raising” saturated fats and states that foods high in stearic acid are not problematic for managing blood cholesterol levels.

Why? The main reason may be that stearic acid converts from a saturated fat to an unsaturated fat when metabolized in the body. Studies have been conducted where participants fed chocolate daily for two weeks showed no change in blood cholesterol when total calories in the diet were kept the same.