Is it normal to crave chocolate during pregnancy

Erica Wickham covers health, exercise and lifestyle topics for various websites. Wickham now serves as a registered dietitian. Most women experience food cravings at some time during their pregnancy. Signs of Conceiving a Baby. L-Tyrosine And Pregnancy.

Can Supplements Help Anger? Fact or Fiction? About the Author Erica Wickham covers health, exercise and lifestyle topics for various websites. Many traditional chocolate products have little cacao and are often so over processed that you get very few, if any, benefits. In fact, it can be detrimental to your health since they are often so loaded with sugar and fat calories.

If you want to get the most out of your chocolate, seek out high percentage dark chocolate made from an artisan chocolate maker if possible. Brewed cacao is another great method source- it offers the amazing flavonoids and healthy stimulant, theobromine, without all the fat and calories. While everyone likes a nice sugar filled chocolate treat, how do we get more pure dark chocolate into our day?

Try the Crio Bru brewed cacao craze. It brews like coffee but you get the benefits of cacao. Learn More Here. Come to the dark side. Make more recipes that use raw cacao powder.

Here are some good ones. Article at a Glance Craving chocolate while pregnant? It has some amazing health benefits for you and your baby. Suggestions on how to get more cacao into your day. Yes, you do NEED that chocolate! Dark Chocolate Relieves Pre-eclampsia:. Already a subscriber? Log in or link your magazine subscription. Account Profile. Sign Out. Photo: Kelly Chiello and Photo by Shutterstock. Some boxes contained milk chocolate, which has all the nutrients usually found in chocolate along with a melt-in-your-mouth texture, some white chocolate, which doesn't contain cocoa solids which give milk and dark chocolate their brown colours but that does have the nice texture, and some cocoa pills, with the cocoa-solid nutrients but none of the chocolate-eating experience.

Other studies tracking chocolate cravings have found no connection to hormone levels. In fact, women in menopause continue to report chocolate cravings, Hormes said; they just chalk it up to some other cause. What this all points to is a cultural or psychological source for cravings. At the same time, in the United States, and to varying extents other places, the thought of highly palatable foods — a term researchers use to refer to everything from ice cream to cake to gooey macaroni cheese — comes with a strong sense of guilt.

So after having a piece of cake, instead of being satisfied and moving on, you eat three more. Eating a few squares of rich chocolate regularly might kill the cravings to gorge on a whole bar Credit: Getty Images.