“Chocolate is the first luxury,” says actress Mariska Hargitay. “It has so many things wrapped up in it: deliciousness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good.” And now you can add another: reducing your chances of getting diabetes.
Yes, you read that right. A massive 30-year study showed that regular consumption of dark chocolate lowers your risk of diabetes considerably.
When he heard this, Rich exclaimed, “There is a God and She loves me!”
He and I are both card-carrying members of die-hard chocoholic families, but like so many sensible people, we’ve grown a trifle concerned about the ridiculous amount of white sugar in the modern diet. For instance, I learned recently the baguettes used for Subway sandwiches have such a high sugar content that
Ireland’s Supreme Court has reclassified them as cake
.
The good news? The
British Medical Journal
reports
that after tracking 192,000 participants for three decades, researchers determined that dark chocolate (and only dark, not the milk or white varieties) contains so much cocoa, with its health-boosting flavonoids, that it actually helps break down sugar and protect insulin-producing cells.
A mere five ounces a week (in layperson’s terms, that’s slightly under one and a half Lindt bars) reduced participants’ chances of getting Type 2 diabetes by 21%.
And it doesn’t have to stop there. “For every ounce of dark chocolate that a person consumed per week,” reported the
Washington Post
, “their risk of developing diabetes
fell by three percent
.”
Eat more dark chocolate to stay healthy? I’m all in!
“This calls for a celebration,” I told Rich. “Let’s go to Juan’s for some dark chocolate cake.”
Our
amigo
Juan runs one of Seville’s most popular eateries,
Vineria San Telmo
, located at the northern tip of the lovely park
Jardines de Murillo
(Gardens of Murillo). His cozy restaurant has been a regular haunt of ours for twenty years. And in addition to excellent cuisine and an extensive wine list, it offers the finest cakes and pies in Seville, prepared by Juan’s wife, Reyes, at her
Pastelería
Gollerias
.
I always tell newcomers, “There are Reyes’ desserts, and then there are everybody else’s. Don’t settle.” I once asked Reyes to tell me her secret. “I cut the sugar in half,” she said. That lets the flavor emerge, which is why her cakes and pies are such standouts here
in Seville, where bland, sugary desserts are the norm.
As it happened, a few days earlier Rich and I had spent the morning talking with Juan as part of our
Amigos
Project research. I was curious to know how he’d arrived in Seville as a 20-something expat, launched this beloved restaurant, kept it going for two decades, and still found time for adventures such as motorcycle rides through Eastern Europe and hauling medical supplies to Ukraine.
Born in Argentina, Juan is a citizen of the world; on one side he’s Spanish and Italian, the other Russian. At 21 he moved to New York and then Washington, DC to work for Marriott. “That was my real university,” he said. Later an airline catering job took him to New York, Washington, Paris, London, and Madrid.
Eventually he left to backpack around Europe, fetching up in Seville in 1996 at the age of 27. After holding various odd jobs, he decided to open Vineria San Telmo in 2004.
He attributes much of his success to choosing the right staff, many of whom have been with him a decade or more. “Your attitude is more important than your aptitude,” said Juan. “I can teach you how to put out a cup of coffee, but your attitude comes from within yourself.”
The red tape wasn’t as difficult to navigate as he’d expected. “It’s not that crazy and not that complicated. Once you turn in your papers, you can open up. It took four years to get my license, but I was open the whole time.” Inspectors visited, saw he was following the filed plans and local regulations, and left him in peace.
Today Juan’s menu includes classic Spanish dishes such as
salmorejo
(cold tomato-based soup), and
pluma
(the fattiest, yummiest cut of pork), along with squid-ink seafood pasta and other original dishes. He was experimental back in the days when Seville served nothing but traditional fare, and it won him loyal customers among locals, expats, and international visitors.
Juan has resisted all suggestions that he expand into additional locations. “My day-to-day life is much more important than having a few more thousands of euros in my bank account,” he told us. “We have our needs completely covered, my wife and I. We don’t need more.”
Having a manageable work life makes it possible for Juan to take off from time to time on travel adventures, including long, unstructured solo trips on his
motorcycle.
In the summer of 2016, when our itineraries brought us all to the Baltics, Rich and I met up with Reyes and Juan for a lively lunch in Riga, Latvia.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, Juan set off on a different kind of road trip. He and Ukrainian friends Isabel and Vladmir rented a van, filled it with medical supplies, and drove to the Poland-Ukraine border. That’s when they discovered their rental van couldn’t be driven outside the EU.
“So I picked up the medicines and walked across the border with them,” he said.
After multiple trips the van was empty, and the trio went and collected a Ukrainian family of six. They’d crossed the border into Poland and were now attempting to reach the island of Mallorca off Spain’s east coast, so Juan and his
amigos
gave them a lift.
“They were scared at the beginning,” Juan recalled. “But after an hour in the van, we were like friends. I’m still in touch; I spoke with them a week ago.”
“What’s your next big adventure?” Rich asked him.
“I don’t know. I just go. I think that’s the best thing of Europe. Right now it’s midday; in ten hours, the three of us could go through fifteen countries. Yeah, it’s phenomenal. It’s amazing. The fact that you can jump onto your motorcycle and head to Germany, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic — just like that.”
I can only hope that wherever his wanderlust takes him next, Juan will be packing plenty of dark chocolate. In addition to fighting hunger and diabetes, dark chocolate lowers cholesterol and protects the memory. And it’s a powerful, feel-good mood enhancer. In fact, researchers have discovered that thanks to a compound called anandamide, chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. I’ve heard the researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can’t remember what they are.
So there you have it, folks. Eat more dark chocolate! Doctor’s orders!
THE
AMIGOS
PROJECT
This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that’s become a global epidemic.
See all my Amigos Project posts here.
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