Posted on 03/12/2007 12:17:22 PM PDT by Ben Mugged
The health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so striking that it may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health, reports Marina Murphy in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told C&I that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin.
Hollenberg has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa drinking on the Kuna people in Panama. He found that the risk of 4 of the 5 most common killer diseases: stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes, is reduced to less then 10% in the Kuna. They can drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week. Natural cocoa has high levels of epicatechin.
'If these observations predict the future, then we can say without blushing that they are among the most important observations in the history of medicine,' Hollenberg says. 'We all agree that penicillin and anaesthesia are enormously important. But epicatechin could potentially get rid of 4 of the 5 most common diseases in the western world, how important does that make epicatechin?... I would say very important'
~snip~Fabricant, who is vice president scientific affairs at the Natural Products Association, says: 'the link between high epicatechin consumption and a decreased risk of killer disease is so striking, it should be investigated further. It may be that these diseases are the result of epicatechin deficiency,' he says.
~snip~
Epicatechin is also found in teas, wine, chocolate and some fruit and vegetables.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Interesting, thanks for sharing
And the Kuna people never die...
And a hot mug of epicatechin to you too.
I wonder about confounding variables. The same diseases are also reduced with regular exercise and a diet low in saturated fats.
Hey now...don't interject logic!
Bring on the chocolate!
More Ovaltine please!................
"The same diseases are also reduced with regular exercise and a diet low in saturated fats"
Not by the 90% suggested in the article...
Not sure I could handle 6 cups of cocoa a day for the rest of my life.
My daughter OTOH...
Well, the addition of sugar undoes all the health benefits - so you have to drink it bitter, as they do. ;)
Could you just chew up a one-ounce square of Baker's Unsweetened Baking Chocolate? The stuff is 100% Cacao, and advertised as all natural.
OK, that was just cruel.
My daughter loves the stuff... Won't touch milk chocolate on her own... She will if I buy it for her though...
I like cocoa, chocolate, any and all forms, dark, light, bitter, etc. If this proves out, then investing in Nestles, Mars, Borden, etc would seem to be the new "hot" stock...........
I'm up to one-ounce squares of bittersweet baking chocolate.
Well, the addition of sugar undoes all the health benefits - so you have to drink it bitter, as they do. ;)
a quick google of the science on this this, suggests that these claims are way bogus.
Flavonals found in fresh foods overall are beneficial. Epicatechin is just one, and not an especially powerful one.
The fats in Chocolate might easily offset any benefit.
A healthy difference of opinion......
Killjoy!
I wonder how many grams of cocoa powder per day he is talking about. I would be willing to take a couple of grams per day if it were in a tablet or capsule form. I'm not sure I could handle the taste day after day.
Yeah, but reading the last few posts on this thread make it seem like this could be another Garlic thing -- miracle vegatble that makes you live forever...
...except that it don't.
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.