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Is Chocolate The New Health Food?

Posting Date: 08/21/2000

In the classic Woody Allen movie, Sleeper, a character awakens from 200 years of hibernation to discover that health advice has been turned upside down. After emerging from his life-support capsule, Woody is informed that wheat germ and organic rice are bad for you while steak and hot fudge are the new health foods.

We still can't recommend a daily dose of steak, but the chocolate in hot fudge is beginning to look more and more like good medicine.

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, recently reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that a special cocoa can keep blood platelets from sticking together and causing clots. This action appears quite similar to the way in which aspirin works to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

While it is too early to recommend a daily chocolate bar, the Mars candy company is quite interested in this line of research. They use the same cocoa (Cocoapro) in many of their candies such as Dove bars and M&Ms.

Not all cocoa contains the active ingredients. Antioxidant flavonoids (polyphenols, procyanidins and catechins) appear to the be the key compounds. These are the same sorts of chemicals found in grapes, wine and tea. Unfortunately, some methods used to process chocolate from the cacao bean destroy these antioxidants. Alkali processing used in many commercial cocoas depletes these agents.

Cacao was treasured for its medicinal properties by the first people to use it, the Olmec of coastal Mexico, 3,000 years ago. Subsequent civilizations prized it for its flavor as well as its health benefits. But until recently, modern Americans considered chocolate a decadent indulgence.

But researchers are discovering that moderate amounts of chocolate may provide a number of cardiovascular advantages. According to the UC Davis scientists, "Cocoa consumption had an aspirin-like effect?Regular intake of cocoa components may contribute to a lower thrombotic [blood clot] risk."