Here’s some good news for chocolate lovers. Researchers say those sweet treats contain large quantities of natural antioxidants which help product us against cardiovascular disease.
Antioxidants are also known as flavonoids and there are hundreds of these compounds in chocolate and cocoa powder, according to a report in Science News Online.
I guess this means chocolate – often thought of as a junk food – could become the next health food fad, but only if manufacturers don’t remove the flavonoids when making candy. One company, Mars Inc., knows a good thing, and has developed a proprietary process to preserve these flavonoids. Soon they will label candy made with this process, to let consumers know the compounds are present.
To gain credibility for the health benefits of chocolate, candy companies and the American Cocoa Research Institute are pumping money into studies, some of which were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Here’s an interesting fact. The researchers say a 40-gram serving of milk chocolate contains about the same amount of flavonoids as a glass of red wine, approximately 400 milligrams. Dark chocolate is really healthy, containing nearly 800 milligrams of flavonoids, or about the same amount as a cup of black tea.
In one study, researchers found flavonoids in chocolate were also more potent than those found in many vitamins, including ascorbic acid.
While there are some 4,000 known flavonoids in plant products, there is one family of the antioxidants prevalent in chocolate – procyanidins, which work to relax the inner surface of blood vessels by increasing nitric oxide concentrations.
So, the next time you bite into a chocolate bar, you can feel good about eating something that not only tastes great but is beneficial to your health.
By: Hand87_5 - 28th August 2004 at 14:17
Belgium : hands down
By: keltic - 28th August 2004 at 09:50
Swiss should have touched chocolate at all, since they have invented one stuff called milk chocolate, which is usually pure little cocoa and tons of butter, fat and other indecent substances. Chocolate makers aren´t using cocoa in big quantities because it´s more expensive. Appart from punishing the Third World trade. Most cocoa producers are underdeveloped countries who depend on their external sells. Brands like Nestle, Cadbury and other mass producers usually cheat the public, intoxicate children with unhealthy fats and contribute to harm men heart diseases. Chocolate should only contain no less than 70% pure cocoa, cocoa butter (which doesn´t contain cholesterol at all) and other ingredients like sugar, nuts, liquor and so on. That´s healthy and only the Belgiums are able to make perfect one. As you may know, Spanish brought chocolate to the continent from Mexico, and Belgium was a part of Spain, so they inherit the good chocolate tradition. A Spanish-French queen introduced it also in France in the 18th century (not sure about it), and Swiss just discovered a good way to get rid of their excedents of butter. Sorry for any Swiss reading the thread. Switzerland is a sweet and nice country, but……..I do hate their chocolate.
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August 27, 2004 at 12:20 pm