What's the real "health food" properties in chocolate? Latest study

A new study published July 1, 2010 says that dark chocolate helps to reduce blood pressure. Sacramento consumers eat a lot of dark chocolate, mostly found in various natural food stores and sections of supermarkets locally. Remember that the four addictive foods are chocolate, sugar, cheese, and meat. Somewhere, you'll find a food that combines all four in different layers.

For example, Panamanian style Greek Moussaka--bottom layer is ground meat under a layer of feta cheese topped with Béchamel sauce, also known as white sauce made with milk, flour, and butter. Above that layer is dark chocolate sweetened with sugar--truly international by then. You can't find it in Sacramento, but you can make it. Try it without the sugar added to unsweetened chocolate. Healthy? Well, not really that healthy as it is full of calories and fats, but some forms of dark chocolate are relatively healthier.

For example, in Sacramento, Walmart sells Lindt 85% cocoa dark chocolate, and other supermarkets carry different brands of dark chocolate that reveal cocoa content on the labels. There a lots of local, national, and international studies you can read online that focus on chocolate or unsweetened cocoa powder helping to lower blood pressure.

See the July 1, 2010 article, Doctors say Chocolate helps to reduce blood pressure. Locally in Sacramento, UC Davis reported studies on chocolate's healthy compounds back in 2006. See the article, "UC Davis News & Information :: Heart-Healthy Compound in Chocolate."

The UC Davis study done four years ago showed that epicatechin, one of a group of chemicals known as flavanols, was directly linked to improved circulation and other hallmarks of cardiovascular health. Findings of the study are reported in the Jan. 16, 2006 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In a multifaceted study involving the Kuna Indians of Panama, an international team of scientists, including those from UC Davis has pinpointed a chemical compound that is, in part, responsible, for the heart-healthy benefits of certain cocoas and some chocolate products.

How do you get that epicatechin in chocolate if the roasting processes it out before you taste it here in Sacramento? You have to look at the alternative sources for the type of chocolate that's healthier. Also see another article online, "Dark Chocolate Lowers Blood Pressure."

According to that article, researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Medicine combined the results of 15 studies into the effects of flavanols, the compounds in chocolate which cause dilation of blood vessels, on blood pressure. The problem is where do you buy the healthiest chocolate?

As far as humans, it's the flavanols in cocoa that have the health benefits, not the fat and sugar in the candy bars. But for those who don't want to get addicted to chocolate (said to be more addictive than heroin) the same flavonoids also are found in tea, wine, and nuts.

Check out that article, "Chocolate, the new health food, or is it?" to read about the study that showed cocoa beverage had increased blood flow in human brains. The study mentioned in that article suggests that cocoa flavanols might be used to "prevent vascular impairments in the brain" perhaps resulting from a stroke.

There a lots of studies online and in medical and scientific journals focusing on chocolate or unsweetened cocoa powder helping to lower blood pressure. For example, flavanol-rich cocoa beverage may increase nitric oxide in the blood vessels, so the blood vessels can relax, dilate, and remain pliable instead of rigid with age or stress.

According to the April 2009 article in ChemMatters, usually read by people interested in the field of chemistry, "Chocolate, the new health food, or is it?" by Gail Kay Haines, the health benefits of chocolate are itemized scientifically. But consumers are warned that a lot of the healthy flavonoids and antioxidants often are processed out of the types of chocolate you buy in most stores.

For example, the magazine article explains, "Chocolate contains more than 300 chemicals. Caffeine, a stimulant, is the most well known, but it is present only in small amounts. Another stimulant is theobromine, found in amounts slightly higher than caffeine. The two molecules are identical except for one
methyl group (CH3), but it is not yet clear how they act together in chocolate."

That's why you should never give chocolate to your dog as it will kill your dog. The article notes that chocolate also contains phenylethylamine (PEA), a natural brain chemical which stimulates the parts of the brain that keep you alert and mimics the brain chemistry of a person in love. In other articles about chocolate, (but not in that article) oxytocin sometimes is mentioned as being the chemical that makes dogs and people go into labor and also creates feelings of love or bonding between new mother and child.

As far as health benefits, the article reports that some polyphenols—such as quercetin and various flavonoids are found in chocolate. For example, some polyphenols found in chocolate have beneficial health effects against heart disease. Scientists scientists revealed that in one study mentioned in the article, cocoa polyphenols acted as antioxidants in the body, compared with coconut butter and sugar alone.

You want to eat unsweetened cocoa, not the sugary, fatty chocolate. In one study, scientists fed hamsters cocoa powder, but don't give your dog chocolate as the stimulant in it will kill your dog. As far as the hamsters, the dose for them was equivalent to a human eating two dark chocolate bars daily.

The dark chocolate significantly inhibited atherosclerosis, a type of heart disease in which fat clogs up arteries, and raised the levels of good cholesterol, according to that article. Again, a warning, never feed chocolate or cocoa powder to any animal. Some animals will die from it, especially dogs. So no chocolate for them.

Here are some advice tips as how to make chocolate more nutritious. Manufacturers should try processing cocoa beans differently to include the flavonoids and antioxidants epicatechin and procyanidin B2 usually lost in the processing of cocoa beans. Some European scientists are actually experimenting with this new process. As far as your teeth, unsweetened chocolate husks contain chemicals that prevent tooth decay. But where do you buy chocolate husks?

Added sugar promotes tooth decay, but when chocolate melts in your mouth at around 97 degrees F, sometimes the chocolate slides off your teeth, leaving just the sugar. So rinse your mouth after eating sweetened chocolate. You might get used to unsweetened chocolate, perhaps combined with sweet fruit.

Chocolate can be unhealthy too, when it comes to the fat. Cocoa butter is all fat. According to the article, there are three major kinds. Don't eat a saturated fat called palmitic acid. It's bad for your heart health. But chocolate also has oleic acid, a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat.

Chocolate also contains stearic acid, part of which later converts to oleic acid in the liver. According to the article, one-third of chocolate’s fat is known to be unhealthy. So you could get your flavonoids from nuts or green tea, for example, instead of chocolate.

What you're getting from the three kinds of fats in chocolate are a lot of calories. Some candy bars contain 500 calories that could have been a full meal, like a lunch that fills you up enough to give you energy to work for the rest of the day.

The healthiest part of chocolate is the kind tribal peoples used to get straight from the tree. Those chemicals that come off the tree with the cacao bean have more beneficial chemicals than possibly any other food, including blueberries, red wine, or green tea, according to that article.

What are your chances, slim to none, of getting chocolate off the tree in that unprocessed form to get the beneficial chemicals before they're processed out? Cacao nubs or chocolate from the tree is not only antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic, anti-cancerous, and anti-viral in the form it was used in thousands of years ago by native tribes in the New World.

Today, what can you really get from high-calorie processed sugary, fat-filled chocolate? The form you get it in most likely is roasted or fermented, with most of the antioxidants destroyed like a bar of over-processed cheese. Chocolate as candy has diluted cocoa.

Don't eat it as a chocolate candy bar. Scientists working with candy manufacturers found that natural cocoa contains the most antioxidants, followed by baking chocolates. Just buy the unsweetened baking chocolate or cocoa powder (unsweetened) and add your own pomegranate syrup over the nibs or morsels of chocolate. Or prepare unsweetened cocoa with other fruit such as a banana to sweeten it. Soon you're going to get genetically modified chocolate.

According to the article, "Chocolate, the new health food, or is it?" in June 2009, Mars, Inc., partnered with IBM and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to launch a five-year project to unravel the genome of the cocoa bean. Guess what comes next?

The goal is more antioxidants and flavonoids in chocolate? Sure. And the ultimate goal is to make the cocoa bean tree more resistant to disease so chocolate companies can make more money with healthier trees. Buy chocolate with the fewest additives. Or make your own chocolate with cocoa powder and extra virgin olive oil, sweetened with pomegranate fruit concentrate.

You want to eat unsweetened cocoa, not the sugary, fatty chocolate. In one study, scientists fed hamsters cocoa powder, but don't give your dog chocolate as the stimulant in it will kill your dog. As far as the hamsters, the dose for them was equivalent to a human eating two dark chocolate bars daily.

The dark chocolate significantly inhibited atherosclerosis, a type of heart disease in which fat clogs up arteries, and raised the levels of good cholesterol, according to that article. As far as humans, it's the flavanols in cocoa that have the health benefits, not the fat and sugar in the candy bars.

For those who don't want to get addicted to chocolate (said in some circles to be more addictive than heroin) the same flavonoids also are found in tea, wine, and nuts. Check out that article to read the study that showed cocoa beverage had increased blood flow in human brains. The study mentioned in that article suggests that cocoa flavanols might be used to prevent vascular impairments in the brain resulting from perhaps a stroke.

There a lots of studies focusing on chocolate or unsweetened cocoa powder helping to lower blood pressure. For example, flavanol-rich cocoa beverage may increase nitric oxide in the blood vessels, so they can relax, dilate, and remain pliable instead of rigid with age.

Chocolate can be unhealthy too, when it comes to the fat. Cocoa butter is all fat. According to the article, there are three major kinds. Don't eat a saturated fat called palmitic acid. It's bad for your heart health. But chocolate also has oleic acid, a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat.

Chocolate also contains a fat called stearic acid, part of which later converts to oleic acid in the liver. According to the article, one-third of chocolate’s fat is known to be unhealthy. So you could get your flavonoids from nuts or green tea, for example, instead of chocolate and avoid the fats you don't want.

What you're getting from the three kinds of fats in chocolate is a lot of calories. Some candy bars contain 500 calories that could have been a full meal, like a lunch that fills you up enough to give you energy to work for the rest of the day.

The healthiest part of chocolate is the kind tribal peoples used to get straight from the tree. Those chemicals that come off the tree with the cacao bean have more beneficial chemicals than possibly any other food, including blueberries, red wine, or green tea, according to that article.

What are your chances, slim to none, of getting chocolate off the tree in that unprocessed form to get the beneficial chemicals before they're processed out? Cacao nubs or chocolate from the tree is not only antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic, anti-cancerous, and anti-viral in the form it was used in thousands of years ago by native tribes in the New World.

Today, what can you really get from high-calorie processed sugary, fat-filled chocolate? The form you get it in most likely is roasted or fermented, with most of the antioxidants destroyed like a bar of over-processed cheese. Chocolate as candy has diluted cocoa.

Don't eat it as a chocolate candy bar. Scientists working with candy manufacturers found that natural cocoa contains the most antioxidants, followed by baking chocolates. Just buy the unsweetened baking chocolate or cocoa powder (unsweetened) and add your own pomegranate syrup over the nibs or morsels of chocolate. Or prepare unsweetened cocoa with other fruit such as a banana to sweeten it. Soon you're going to get genetically modified chocolate.

According to the article, "Chocolate, the new health food, or is it?" in June 2009, Mars, Inc., partnered with IBM and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to launch a five-year project to unravel the genome of the cocoa bean. Guess what comes next?

The goal is more antioxidants and flavonoids in chocolate? Sure. And the ultimate goal is to make the cocoa bean tree more resistant to disease so chocolate companies can make more money with healthier trees. Buy chocolate with the fewest additives. Or make your own chocolate with cocoa powder and extra virgin olive oil, sweetened with pomegranate fruit concentrate.

You want to eat unsweetened cocoa, not the sugary, fatty chocolate. In one study mentioned in that article, scientists fed hamsters cocoa powder, but don't give your dog chocolate as the stimulant in it will kill your dog. As far as the hamsters, the dose for them was equivalent to a human eating two dark chocolate bars daily.

The dark chocolate significantly inhibited atherosclerosis, a type of heart disease in which fat clogs up arteries, and raised the levels of good cholesterol, according to that article. Again, a warning, never feed chocolate or cocoa powder to any animal. Some animals will die from it, especially dogs. So no chocolate for them.

As far as humans, it's the flavanols in cocoa that have the health benefits, not the fat and sugar in the candy bars. But for those who don't want to get addicted to chocolate (said to be more addictive than heroin) the same flavonoids also are found in tea, wine, and nuts.

Check out that article to read the study that showed cocoa beverage had increased blood flow in human brains. The study mentioned in that article suggests that cocoa flavanols might be used to prevent vascular impairments in the brain resulting from perhaps a stroke.

Dark chocolate may be just what the doctor ordered for patients with damaged livers.A Spanish study found chocolate can help lower blood pressure in the liver and reduce damage to blood vessels in people with cirrhosis, a potentially fatal scarring of the liver that can lead to organ failure and cancer. Only antioxidant-rich dark chocolate is helpful, researchers said in a study presented today, July 1, 2010 at the International Liver Conference in Vienna.

For example, flavanol-rich cocoa beverage may increase nitric oxide in the blood vessels, so they can relax, dilate, and remain pliable instead of rigid with age.

Here's some advice as how to make chocolate more nutritious. Processing cocoa beans differently to include the flavonoids and antioxidants epicatechin and procyanidin B2 usually lost in the processing of cocoa beans. Some European scientists are actually experimenting with this new process. As far as your teeth, unsweetened chocolate husks contain chemicals that prevent tooth decay. But where do you buy chocolate husks?

What are the Unhealthy Fats in Chocolate?

Chocolate can be unhealthy too, when it comes to the fat. Cocoa butter is all fat. According to the article, there are three major kinds. Don't eat a saturated fat called palmitic acid. It's bad for your heart health. But chocolate also has oleic acid, a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat. Chocolate also contains stearic acid, part of which later converts to oleic acid in the liver. According to the article, one-third of chocolate’s fat is known to be unhealthy. So you could get your flavonoids from nuts or green tea, for example, instead of chocolate.

What you're getting from the three kinds of fats in chocolate is a lot of calories. Some candy bars contain 500 calories that could have been a full meal, like a lunch that fills you up enough to give you energy to work for the rest of the day. The healthiest part of chocolate is the kind tribal peoples used to get straight from the tree. Those chemicals that come off the tree with the cacao bean have more beneficial chemicals than possibly any other food, including blueberries, red wine, or green tea, according to that article.

What are your chances, slim to none, of getting chocolate off the tree in that unprocessed form to get the beneficial chemicals before they're processed out? Cacao nubs or chocolate from the tree is not only antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic, anti-cancerous, and anti-viral in the form it was used in thousands of years ago by native tribes in the New World.

Today, what can you really get from high-calorie processed sugary, fat-filled chocolate? The form you get it in most likely is roasted or fermented, with most of the antioxidants destroyed like a bar of over-processed cheese. Chocolate as candy has diluted cocoa.

Don't eat it as a chocolate candy bar. Scientists working with candy manufacturers found that natural cocoa contains the most antioxidants, followed by baking chocolates. Just buy the unsweetened baking chocolate or cocoa powder (unsweetened) and add your own pomegranate syrup over the nibs or morsels of chocolate. Or prepare unsweetened cocoa with other fruit such as a banana to sweeten it. Soon you're going to get genetically modified chocolate.

According to the article, "Chocolate, the new health food, or is it?" in June 2009, Mars, Inc., partnered with IBM and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to launch a five-year project to unravel the genome of the cocoa bean. Guess what comes next?

The goal is more antioxidants and flavonoids in chocolate? Sure. And the ultimate goal is to make the cocoa bean tree more resistant to disease so chocolate companies can make more money with healthier trees. Buy chocolate with the fewest additives. Or make your own chocolate with cocoa powder and extra virgin olive oil, sweetened with pomegranate fruit concentrate.