Posted on 06/02/2004 9:15:27 PM PDT by FairOpinion
TUESDAY, June 1 (HealthDayNews) -- For those who think the world is a bitter place, medical science offers this sweet health tidbit: Chocolate might be good for you.
Not just any chocolate, and always in moderation, said Mary Engler, a professor of physiological nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing. But her new study does find that biting into the right stuff can make arteries expand, increasing blood flow and thus reducing cardiovascular risk.
Milk chocolate won't do, Engler sressed, because it's, well, too milky. Look for darker chocolates, because darkness is an indicator of high levels of flavonoids, the chemicals that loosen up the arteries.
And this is one instance where good taste and good health go hand in hand, Engler said.
You can tell that a chocolate has a high flavonoid content because "the flavor is so intense and rich," she said.
The study that Engler and her colleagues are reporting in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition had 11 willing participants eat 1.6 ounces of flavonoid-rich chocolate every day for two weeks. Another 10 volunteers, sacrificing themselves for science, consumed an equal amount of low-flavonoid chocolate.
Ultrasound measurements showed that expansion of the arteries in response to greater blood flow increased by 10 percent in the flavonoid consumers, while there was a slight decrease in those who got the flavonoid-poor chocolate. Blood levels of a powerful flavonoid, epicatechin, rose more than eightfold for the high-flavonoid group and remained unchanged for the others.
The study was done in collaboration with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. Jeffrey Blumberg, chief of the center's Antioxidant Research Laboratory, said the work has expanded to look at other flavonoid-containing foods.
"Not only chocolate, but also tea, oat bran, almond skins and blueberries, all are good sources of flavonoids," Blumberg said. "We're trying to get a better understanding of vital chemicals, flavonoids being one of the larger groups."
Chocolate "happens to be a rich source of flavonoids," Blumberg said, but he added that "we are not trying to position chocolate as a health food."
In addition to flavonoids, chocolate also has a lot of calories and a lot of saturated fat, neither of which is good for the arteries, he said.
"But in the context of a reasonable diet, chocolate is not only a pleasurable food but might contain some health-promoting ingredients," Blumberg said.
Recommendations about chocolate can be compared with those about wine, Engler said. An occasional glass or two of wine has been shown to be associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, she said, "but people should not be overindulgent with wine. The same is true of dark chocolate in moderation as part of a well-balanced diet."
The Milky Way Midnight bars with the dark chocolate are sooooooo good. And now they're good for me too :-)
Bummer. I don't do dark chocolate...as I bite into a Godiva milk chocolate Open Oyster.
Nope! Cannot and will not accept that lighter chocolates aren't good for you but darker chocolates are. My favorite is lighter chocolates (really love my snickers bar too)/
Actually I am sure there is good stuff in milk chocolate, just not as much. You probably have to eat twice as much milk chocolate to make up for it. ;)
I knew it!!
Nothing like one or two or eight Shiner bocks diluted with two or three shots of rumple.
Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all.
In another article I found:
"In fact, a small bar of dark chocolate contains as many flavonoids as six apples, 4.5 cups of tea, 28 glasses of white wine and two glasses of red wine!"
http://www.brinkzone.com/qanda6.html
Probably milk chocolate contains 1/3 to 1/2 as much flavanoids as dark chocolate, so, as I said, you have to eat more milk chocolate to get the equivalent of what's in a piece of dark chocolate.
I am actually amazed that there are more flavanoids in chocolate, than in other well known foods/wine.
And more good news:
E. The Benefits of Eating Chocolate
Narrator: This is Science Today. A recent University of California study has found that people who ate one dark chocolate bar a week experienced an increase in blood vessel dilation, which is an important indicator of cardiovascular health. Researcher Mary Engler says that's because dark chocolate contains flavanols - a class of the heart-healthy flavanoids found in back tea and red wine.
Engler:There is a difference between the dark chocolate and the milk chocolate. Milk chocolate has milk in it and it dilutes out the amount of flavanoids. Dark chocolate has a higher percentage of flavanoids.
Narrator:And surprisingly, study participants didn't raise their cholesterol or weight by eating a dark chocolate bar, two weeks straight.
Engler: Chocolate has always had a bad rap because of the high calories and the fat content, but forty percent of the chocolate is represented as mono and saturate fat - oleic acid - which can lower LDL, or the bad cholesterol. The other sixty percent consists of thirty-five percent of stearic acid, which is cholesterol neutral.
http://www.ucop.edu/sciencetoday/pages/archive/transcripts/2003/sci768.html
I bet those brownies will go fast, even if people don't know it's also a health food. ;)
It stands to reason that milk chocolate is better than no chocolate at all. With or without flavonoids. ; )
It is not the choclate, but the hydrogenated trans fats included with those candy bars that are so bad for our cardiovascular health.
Yumm! :)
I never tried the Dove dark chocolate bar, but I have to look for it, next time I am in the grocery store.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
See the info (last paragraph) in my post 12.
Drat! And my lifelong taste for "sweet" chocolate has in the past few years... evaporated. As in, I'm indifferent to it. Will bitter chocolate do? Chicken en mole?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.