To Your Health
August, 2010 (Vol. 04, Issue 08) |
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Chocolate: The Next Miracle Food?
By Dr. Jacob Schor
You heard it right: Chocolate is rapidly becoming the next miracle food. If minimally processed, it contains the highest flavanol content of any food. [Flavanols are phytonutrients also found in various fruits and vegetables and associated with numerous health benefits.] The problem is that these valuable compounds are nearly all destroyed when the cocoa beans are heated during processing. For a number of years, chocolate companies have put a great deal of effort toward figuring out how to preserve the flavanols in chocolate, and it appears some of them have succeeded. Several research papers report striking effects from eating these "special" chocolates regularly, including that eating chocolate lowers blood pressure, improves cholesterol levels, and lowers blood sugar. One of the most intriguing suggests chocolate even prevents sunburn - not by rubbing the chocolate into one's skin, but by eating it. Let's learn more about how chocolate is not only good (really good), but also good for you.
Chocolate for Blood Pressure
A number of recent "chocolate papers" have been published. Which is the most interesting? That honor should probably go to researchers from Harvard who solved what we could call the Kuna Puzzle. The Kuna are a group of indigenous people living along the coast of Panama who for the most part live as their ancestors did, hunting and fishing. However, some have moved to Panama City. The Kuna stand out in the medical literature because they have no age-related increase in blood pressure; 60-year-olds have the same blood pressure as 20-year-olds - that is, as long as they stay out of Panama City. Once a member of the Kuna moves to the city, their blood pressure tends to rise. Of those who live in Panama City, 45 percent of Kuna ages 60 and older have elevated blood pressure.
Why the Kuna don't suffer from hypertension as they age has been a long standing puzzle, up unto recently. In 2006, Harvard researchers explained the Kuna's apparent "immunity" to hypertension. They carefully modified the Kuna diet and realized that island-dwelling Kuna drink large quantities of flavanol-rich cocoa on a daily basis (5 cups or more) and incorporate it into numerous recipes. On the other hand, Kuna who live in the city consume far less cocoa, and what they do consume is commercially produced and thus has little flavanol content.
In simple words, for non-city-dwelling Kuna, eating flavanol-rich chocolate keeps their blood pressure down. Recall that chocolate contains the highest flavanol content of any food when minimally processed, but these valuable compounds are nearly all destroyed during standard processing (which involves heating). So, when the Kuna switch from unprocessed, "homemade" chocolate to city, store-bought, processed chocolate, they no longer get the chocolate protection.
Typically, cocoa loses over 70 percent of its initial polyphenol content (flavanol is a polyphenol) during manufacturing. The heat destroys it. In the past several years, researchers and food scientists have developed ways to preserve the polyphenol and particularly the flavanol content of chocolate. These high-flavanol chocolates have allowed for the study of chocolate's potential benefits.
There is little doubt any more that these chocolates lower blood pressure. Eating them activates specific enzymes called nitric oxide synthases. These enzymes increase the amount of nitric oxide made in the blood. Nitric oxide is a potent vasodilator and improves the function of blood vessels.
