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How long should you eat chocolate before bed?

three hours So, if you have trouble falling asleep, we suggest you steer clear of it for sure. Here's a tip that will help: don't eat chocolate at least three hours before bedtime. This will ensure that there's enough time to digest your food before you sleep.

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Most of us love chocolates, don’t we? A good bar of chocolate can solve all the problems in the world, or that’s what we’d like to believe. The urge to have it rises especially at night and most of us are guilty of indulging in it before bedtime. Sounds harmless, doesn’t it? Well, the sad news is it’s exactly the opposite because chocolate before bed can really mess with your sleep. Experts suggest that eating chocolate after 5 pm is a bad idea. We know you’re crying out loud, just like we did when we heard this piece of news. Oh, and dark chocolate is banned too. Yes, this variety of chocolate has a whole lot of health benefits, but reserve it for a small treat post-lunch. You must be wondering why so much drama around chocolate before bedtime? Well, that’s because chocolate contains caffeine, which makes it hard to fall asleep. And when you do not get deep sleep, you don’t feel rested. According to research, your body tries to process caffeine, sugar and fat, all the same time, when it’s time to ideally slow down. Although chocolate has a compound called theobromine that helps to lower your risk of heart disease and insulin resistance, caffeine is the culprit.

What is the best thing to do?

Remember every person’s body is different. For some, having caffeine at night has no impact, while for others, even a small amount can interfere with their shut-eye. So, if you have trouble falling asleep, we suggest you steer clear of it for sure. Here’s a tip that will help: don’t eat chocolate at least three hours before bedtime. This will ensure that there’s enough time to digest your food before you sleep. We already know eating a large meal before bedtime can heavily impact your sleep. Now, we aren’t saying you need to go hungry to bed. So, if those hunger pangs strike, just have a small piece of banana or some peanut butter.

Here are some other foods that will help promote sleep

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What is the white film on old chocolate?

That white discoloration that sometimes forms on old chocolate turns the stomachs of chocolate lovers everywhere. For years, researchers have known that the harmless change, known as a fat bloom, is caused by liquid fat such as cocoa butter migrating through the chocolate and crystalizing on the candy's surface.

That white discoloration that sometimes forms on old chocolate turns the stomachs of chocolate lovers everywhere. For years, researchers have known that the harmless change, known as a fat bloom, is caused by liquid fat such as cocoa butter migrating through the chocolate and crystalizing on the candy's surface. But exactly how that process takes place—and how to prevent it—has remained a mystery. Now, researchers have captured the bloom process in real time, they report online in Applied Materials & Interfaces. After combining the main ingredients of chocolate—cocoa, sugar, milk powder, and cocoa butter—and grounding them into a powder (to speed up the process), the scientists used high-powered x-rays to peer into the sweet's crystal structure, down to a scale of several nanometers. When they added a few small drops of sunflower oil to the powder samples, they observed the liquid fat moving through pores and tiny spaces in the chocolate very quickly, most likely as a result of capillary action—the movement of a liquid within porous material due to the forces of adhesion, cohesion, and surface tension. After several hours, the oil had also softened the chocolate, leading to increased migration of the fat. The study suggests that reducing the porosity of chocolate when it's being made could help stem the appearance of the off-putting bloom and improve the overall quality of chocolate. Minimizing the amount of liquid fat in chocolate by storing your hoarded stashes in cool, but not too cold, conditions would also help: Eighteen degrees Celsius, it turns out, is the sweet spot.

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