Shared Visions Unlimited with Greg Dixon

Living A Life You Love with Bonnie and Greg Dixon ~ Adventures with Chocolate

• Greg and Bonnie Dixon • Season 2 • Episode 18

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What if indulging in your favourite treat could be beneficial for your health? Join us as we uncover the surprising perks of enjoying chocolate in moderation. Bonnie shares her expertise on how this delectable delight can lower blood pressure and enhance brain function, all while we revel in personal tales from our "Chocolate Whisperer" honeymoon escapades. Imagine a chocolate buffet at a Hotel or the rich flavours of chocolate-infused mole sauce. Our conversation is a sensory journey, encouraging everyone to savour chocolate consciously and guilt-free.

But the adventure doesn't stop at chocolate! We're thrilled to unveil our plans for a vibrant new platform for Living A Life You Love, designed to celebrate the passions that bring joy to everyday life. From music and dance to network marketing and Unity, we're creating a space where everyone can shine their light. Embrace the motto, "life is short, eat dessert first," and join us in building a community that inspires and uplifts. Please bring a friend and be part of this exciting journey, as we aim to share something new and uplifting almost every day.

Come learn more about Shared Visions Unlimited at https://sharedvisions.com/

Greg:

Well, happy Tuesday everyone. This is Bonnie and Greg Dixon. Part of your Living a Life, you Love adventure here, and we're going to talk about chocolate, adventures with chocolate. So, before we get too far, why don't you type in the comments here if you like chocolate, just give us a. Yes, there are a couple of people in the world who don't, but it's hard to say. And meanwhile we've got a couple of things to share with you and Bonnie, do you have some things to talk to about the health value of chocolate?

Bonnie:

Absolutely so. What's really fun is often we think, oh, the foods that are good for me don't taste good. Fun is often we think, oh, the foods that are good for me don't taste good. But in this case, research, especially in the last 20 years, has shown chocolate has some benefits. Now, one of the things I must say is it comes in many forms. Milk chocolate has milk added to it. Dark chocolate a lot of times has sugar added to it, and so we want to think about this is small but mighty, so we'd want to use small amounts of dark chocolate. Now, one of the things that here's just I'm just going to read off a slew of things just knowing that it can be very helpful, particularly for lowering blood pressure, reducing cholesterol, improving brain function, reducing inflammation and I'm saying all these words off of an article, just so you know where this is coming from Reducing the risk of heart disease, reducing the risk of diabetes, reducing the risk of cancer, preventing blood clots and improving memory. Now, I'm a layperson, I'm just reading this off of an article, off of the internet.

Bonnie:

Now, the thing is, what we want to do with any food, particularly chocolate, is knowing that small quantities and the best chocolate you can afford are the best way to do it and, done over time, you can add some benefit. The cacao bean is fascinating. It's really ugly actually, and within this big funny thing is inside this little seed, and they ground it up in South America, the Incas, and they were drinking it almost pure and probably not with much sweetener. I don't know if you've ever had drinking chocolate, but it's very intense, again, in small quantities. But in past, people that had lots of sugar and then you get a sweet bar that you can eat, or lots of milk and sugar and then you get milk chocolate or even white chocolate, which isn't. It's only the fat from the chocolate, not the part of the bean that is really antioxidant.

Bonnie:

So what I want to just say about chocolate is it's one of the foods you can feel good about if you like it. I think a great way to add chocolate into your diet if if you want the health benefits, is to use cocoa powder, and cocoa powder is not highly sweetened and you can add it to, say, your coffee, or you can add it to your milk or cereal or oatmeal and get small quantities that way. Now for myself, I do love all chocolate milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, chocolate with almonds I love it all, but as a nutrient, dense food that's what we're talking about here Use it sparingly, but don't feel bad if you eat chocolate. Even the founder of LifeWave, david Schmidt, will mention dark chocolate as one of those things to add to your diet for the extra nutrition. So with that, I'll just say, greg and I have just loved touring around when we were on our honeymoon interviewing chocolatiers, and so that's another fun way is go to a local chocolatier and try out some really good chocolate. How about you, honey?

Greg:

Yeah, well, we, going back to the touring, we spent some time. Wherever we would go, we would stop off and interview and take photos in chocolatier shops photos in chocolatier shops and we called ourselves the Chocolate Whispers. We rented, we bought a domain and we should have probably followed through with it. There are tons of great chocolatiers in the Vancouver area. We went to the chocolate factory in Burnaby and I've got a video I have to track it down about the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory in San Francisco. So it's all fun stuff.

Greg:

Anyway, back to the health benefits. So my story is there used to be and it was called the Mirage Hotel. It's now the Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver. They had a chocolate buffet and you go in there and you spend a small fortune for the buffet. They had things like chocolate, pizzas, fruit, all sorts of anything you can think of chocolate. And I was standing there as a young woman. She was sort of hesitant to go in. I'm pretty sure she had gone in once and then she was deciding whether she wanted to go in and get some more. So I just leaned over and I said I read this article one time that said the human body can only stand so many chocolate calories and it simply ignores the rest. She looked at me and she said well, that sounds pretty bogus, but it works for me. So she grabbed the plate and went back in. So if you ever wanted to be enabled for any kind of chocolate habit, just just give me a call. I encourage you to do it yeah, back to chocolate benefits.

Bonnie:

Imagine anything from savory to sweet. I just thought of a really cool recipe and in Mexican cooking you use a bit of chocolate to make a sauce, a mole sauce, to go with chicken. Oh, my goodness, that's good. So think of chocolate as savory and sweet. It doesn't always have sweet. Yeah, savory and sweet, and again to use always have to be savory and sweet.

Bonnie:

And again, to use it, use it sparingly, but don't be afraid of chocolate itself. It's usually a higher quality bar, will have less sugar and more cacao butter. And actually it took me a while to get used to dark chocolate. But if you let it, a small bite, a small square, melt in your mouth, just let it melt, you'll really get to taste what chocolate is and it not. It again, it's not for everyone's tastes, but at the same time just think of it as an ingredient that can be very beneficial. Again, in small doses. You're not eating the whole chocolate bar, for heaven's sakes, too much. A small square of dark chocolate a day or every other day could be very beneficial. And I think when we think of chocolate, we think of, you know, oh, an indulgence. So when you do do it, be willing to spend the extra bucks, because then you're eating it smaller quantities, sparingly, but knowing it's nutrient dense and that's the fun part of it.

Bonnie:

I'm trying to think of a good chocolate recipe. I think for myself is an old-fashioned recipe. It was during the Depression. It's called Depression Cake and it's actually eggless, milkless, and it's so easy to make. Look it up, it's a chocolate Depression Cake. If you need the recipe, make sure to contact me as well. I'd be happy to share it with you Because, again, you can have a sweet treat, and this one uses cocoa powder, and it can be very helpful because you could. You don't have to use wheat flour. You can use a another kind of flour, a wheat free flour or mix and or oat flour, and you get the wonderful benefits from doing that. Yeah, so one thing I must say about you, honey you and I love chocolate and we indulge and it makes us very happy, and that's one of the things living a life you love. You want to have fun in life and chocolate's one of them for most people.

Greg:

Yeah, so I joked. One time I went into Walmart and I bought some eggnog and I said you know, I wanted to have some cereal and eggnog but I was out of eggnog and but now it's out of season. Cereal and chocolate milk would work too.

Bonnie:

Cereal and chocolate milk for my honey.

Greg:

Yeah. So I asked, put in the chat, what kind of chocolate do you like? And you know where you're at. If you know any really good chocolate tiers in your town, you know you can recommend it. That'd be great and that's good fun.

Greg:

So we're eventually where we're headed with. This is living the life you love is. We're going to have a website and a blog and uh and uh podcast, and you could go back in and and we're really uh, wanting this to be an open thing, and so if you have something that you really love to do and you want to share it, come and be a guest, you know, and if you want to talk about chocolate, if you want to talk about, uh, almost anything, I I'm going to talk about almost anything. I'm going to talk about some music. At some point we're going to talk about dance and network marketing, all sorts of things, maybe even Unity. We've got some experience with Unity, so we're going to have a lot of fun with this platform and you're probably never going to be sure what's going to happen every day.

Bonnie:

It reminds me of the song title. You know, what the world needs now is love, sweet love, and, I think, living a life you love. This is all we can do from day to day, moment to moment, is live a life you love, shine your light and it will brighten up the whole room and the whole neighborhood and your neighbors and your family members. And just know that we can be the change. You know, a mosquito is very tiny. It makes a big difference in your life.

Greg:

We want to be the opposite of that.

Bonnie:

We want to be the light, where you turn the light switch on and everyone around says, ah, it feels so good to be in the light.

Greg:

It's good to be in the light it's good to be in the light. And Bonnie and I have a saying. We say life is short, eat dessert first. So get your hit of chocolate joy before you're reading the news.

Bonnie:

Yeah, that's for sure. Well, I look forward to living a life you love all together. Bring a friend and let's have some fun.

Greg:

Yeah, okay. So we're going to try to do this almost every day, and so stay tuned and see what we come up with for tomorrow.