Dark Chocolate

Some good news about dark chocolate... hopefully the Easter bunny delivered some for y'all. LOL


"IV: Possible Health Benefits of Chocolate

Two significant studies on the possible health benefits of chocolate were published in 2003 in prestigious scientific journals. One study, published in Nature magazine, found that only dark chocolate was a potent antioxidant. This study established that adding milk to chocolate or drinking milk with dark chocolate prevents the body from absorbing the antioxidants in chocolate. The second study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that dark chocolate appeared to lower high blood pressure among middle-aged people with mild cases of hypertension.

A later study by Italian researchers at the University of L’Aquila corroborated the finding that dark chocolate could help lower blood pressure. This study also found that dark chocolate helped boost the body’s ability to metabolize sugar from food, a finding that could have implications for the treatment of diabetes. Other studies have found that dark chocolate can improve cardiovascular health, as well as thin the blood, in much the same way that aspirin does, thus cutting the risk of clots.

Medical researchers caution, however, that dark chocolate is high in calories and fat. They recommend that people eating dark chocolate for its possible health benefits should eat moderate amounts and cut back on equivalent sources of calories. They also note that flavonoids can be obtained from other food sources.

Several chocolate manufacturers are developing products high in flavonoid content and are actively pursuing possible health benefits from chocolate with pharmaceutical companies. Mars, Incorporated, a U.S. chocolate manufacturer, patented a method for processing cocoa beans that it says preserves flavonoids by changing the way the beans are fermented, dried, and processed. Mars products made by this method are marketed with the label Cocoapro. In 2005 Barry Callebaut, a Swiss-based manufacturer and reportedly the world’s largest producer of chocolate, began marketing a chocolate product under the trademark Acticoa. The company said the product was high in flavonoids due to a manufacturing process in which a certain proportion of cocoa beans are washed rather than fermented."


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