Training & Nutrition - Chocolate

It's nutritious if it has a high cacao content, but that lowers the melting point. Yesterday's ride was cool enough, but for July heat I may need a cooler on my bike. I like Lindt, Choceur, Moser Roth, etc., and dark chocolate covered cashews.

I searched several pages of the 40 pages of search results and did not find a thread with chocolate in the title, but there may be another one back there somewhere.

It's nutritious if it has a high cacao content, but that lowers the melting point. Yesterday's ride was cool enough, but for July heat I may need a cooler on my bike. I like Lindt, Choceur, Moser Roth, etc., and dark chocolate covered cashews.

I searched several pages of the 40 pages of search results and did not find a thread with chocolate in the title, but there may be another one back there somewhere.

Chocolate is a health food IMHO. All the warnings about don't eat too much are mostly applicable to chocolate contaminated with excess sugar. I eat chocolate that is anywhere from 86% minimum to 100%.

I posted about this a while back.

Don in Austin

Chocolate has too much fat in it to be an effective on-bike food. A rando riding buddy of mine really likes chocolate, so filled one of his bottles with chunks for a long ride. Didn't work out so well, only did that once. M&Ms and Sun Drops (much better) have a hard candy cover and don't melt if you don't crush them.

Snickers is an excellent energy bar, a whole lot cheaper than the various name-brand energy bars, with similar nutrition, and available at almost every convenience store in the country. But they're messy as heck when the temperature is in the upper 90s.

For the hot days when you won't pass a convenient convenience store, look into Luna bars. They'll melt in hotter weather, too, but they're not as messy as a Snickers. Save the fine stuff for the evenings.

The U.S. Military has experimented with high melting point, high energy chocolate since around WWII. Success has always been limited, as to get a bar that can survive over 120 degrees fahrenheit seems to have cost the "chocolate" its flavor. The original request was that its taste surpass that of a boiled potato, and it did not seem to exceed that by much. Maybe you can find more information on the ingredients if you are the cooking and experimental type.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_chocolate

It's easy to make chocolate cookies or brownies using cocoa powder, oat flour, whole wheat flour, oatmeal, and just enough sugar and fat to make it tasty and hold together. You can get a dark chocolate taste that won't melt and gives you all the benefits of chocolate. Chocolate's benefits come from the cocoa solids, not from the cocoa butter and other fats or sugar. Chocolate milk or chocolate protein shakes (made with a banana for potassium and carbs) make a good recovery drink after the ride.