We've quietly agreed that dark chocolate is the one sweet that counts as medicine. In this episode, I put that idea on trial.

We start at the molecular level: how cacao flavanols like epicatechin are thought to trigger nitric oxide, relax blood vessels and push more blood to the brain. Then we test that story against COSMOS-Mind, a three-year trial where thousands of older adults took cocoa extract or a placebo. The result wasn't what the marketing promised, and a basic multivitamin quietly did better.

Then the part most biohackers skip: how Dutch processing, invented in 1828, strips out most of the flavanols, and what Consumer Reports found when it tested dark chocolate bars for lead and cadmium.

In this episode:

- The flavanol and nitric oxide theory behind "chocolate for your brain"

- Why most commercial bars have ...