Study: Dark Chocolate May Have Benefit

Yahoo!/AP ^ | 8/27/2003 | Lindsey Tanner

[B Knotts]

CHICAGO - A small study suggests that eating dark chocolate can lower your blood pressure - a delicious instance in which something that tastes good might, for a change, be good for you, too.

The short study would need to be confirmed in larger, longer-term ones before doctors could recommend treatment with chocolate, researchers say.

Yet if the results can be confirmed, "you can sin with perhaps a little less bad feeling," said Dr. Franz Messerli, a hypertension expert at Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans.

The German study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association (news - web sites).

Thirteen adults with untreated mild hypertension got to eat 3-ounce chocolate bars every day for two weeks. Half of the patients got white chocolate, half got dark chocolate.

Dark chocolate contains plant substances called polyphenols - ingredients scientists think are responsible for the heart-healthy attributes of red wine. Polyphenols also have been shown to lower blood pressure in animals.

Blood pressure remained pretty much unchanged in the group that ate white chocolate, which does not contain polyphenols. But after two weeks, systolic blood pressure - the top number - had dropped an average of five points in the dark-chocolate group. The lower, or diastolic, reading fell an average of almost two points.

The participants had an average blood pressure reading of about 153 over 84.

While their blood pressure did not fall enough to be considered in the desirable range - below 120 over 80 - the results show dark chocolate "might serve as a promising approach to reduce systolic blood pressure," said lead author Dr. Dirk Taubert of the University of Cologne.

Taubert said participants ate the chocolate bars instead of the sweets they usually consumed, and thus did not gain weight during the study.

The study received no industry funding - the researchers bought the chocolate themselves from the supermarket.

[B Knotts]

Germany: the land of chocolate.

[Rebelbase]

Why must everything have a racist overtone?

[joey'smom]

Hey, this could be Kobe's defense! He was just trying to lower his blood pressure!

[Onelifetogive]

A small study suggests that eating dark chocolate can lower your blood pressure.

This could explain the near-perfect vacuum in my blood vessels....

[RandyRep]

This is great! Finally, a research study that works for me.

The only problem is that a dark chocolate bar or a dark choc Dove bar (or similar) has a whole lot of calories too. I guess I have to make the sacrifice.

I know -- I'll eat my dark choc bar while walking an extra 5 miles. That ought to do it!

I love dark choc...

[najida]

Yes!
Red wine and chocolate...
No wonder my blood pressure is always low normal.

[cookcounty]

"This could explain the near-perfect vacuum in my blood vessels...."

LOL....me too, 55 with high cholesterol, but I've probably averaged 8 oz a day since age 16. My BP is 110/70.

[CFW]

Chocolate

The Hormone Hostage knows that there are days in the month when all a man
has to do is open his mouth and he takes his very life into his own hands.
This is a handy guide that should be as common as a driver's license in the
wallet of every husband, boyfriend, or significant other.

DANGEROUS: What's for dinner?

SAFER: Can I help you with dinner?

SAFEST: Where would you like to go for dinner?

ULTRASAFE: Here, have some chocolate.

DANGEROUS: Are you wearing that?

SAFER: Gee, you look good in brown.

SAFEST: WOW! Look at you!

ULTRASAFE: Here, have some chocolate.


DANGEROUS: What are you so worked up about?

SAFER: Could we be overreacting?

SAFEST: Here's fifty dollars.

ULTRASAFE: Here, have some chocolate.

DANGEROUS: Should you be eating that?

SAFER: You know, there are a lot of apples left.

SAFEST: Can I get you a glass of wine with that?

ULTRASAFE: Here, have some chocolate.


DANGEROUS: What did you do all day?

SAFER: I hope you didn't overdo it today.

SAFEST: I've always loved you in that robe!

ULTRASAFE: Here, have some more chocolate.

Pass this onto all of your hormonal friends and those who might need a good
laugh! Or men who need a warning! And remember: Money talks...but
chocolate
sings.

[Pyro7480]

Mmmm.. chocolate.. (in a Homer Simpson voice) ;-)

[blackdog]

There is no such thing as any chocolate other than dark chocolate. That other stuff is emulsifiers, lecithin, and don't even ask me to comment on "white chocolate".

My great grandfather owned Marquetand candies until around 1955 when he sold out to Russel Stover. Hand made from start to finish. My grandmother taught us how to make good chocolates at home too from her years of slave experience in working for her dad. Powdered cocoa, the kind produced from fermented beans processed in an alkaline method, cocoa butter, and super-fine sugar(not powdered sugar, but it looks almost the same). You add a few drops of water to thicken it and a little cocoa butter to thin it. You can see the VOC oils in the mix like an oil slick. That's the healthy stuff.

If you overshoot the temperature by as little as three degrees you will cook off all the fine flavor. It's kind of like hopping a fine beer. You will never see those aromatic oils in milk chocolate.

[SupplySider]

I read more about this study somewhere else, unfortunately I can't remember where. They were saying it must be dark, not milk chocolate, and only from certain kinds of cocoa beans. Belgian and German dark chocolates were almost all the right kind, Hershey's and most American brands were not.They also emphasized that you should cut the clories from somewhere else if you add chocolate.

I actually took this study to heart, and have been eating a little piece of imported dark chocolate every day. Most pleasant health thing I've tried.

[Salgak]

That's the one thing I miss about not traveling to Europe any more: the incredible dark chocolate. Last time I was in Brussels I brought back almost 50 pounds of chocolate, 20+ pounds of it in a single, massive 10-kilogram Extra Dark Extra Bittersweet Baker's Slab.

And Cote d'Or made a nice Extra Dark as well. . .

Not even Ghiradelli in SF makes better Dark Choc than I've found in Belgium. . .

[Cooter]

Pure Delight makes a low-carb dark chocolate.

[BlessedBeGod]

That's funny. The women in our family will only eat dark chocolate. We must know something that we didn't know we knew. ;-)

[Stefan Stackhouse]

Wasn't there a hilarious scene from a Woody Allen film where two scientists a century in the future were saying something like: "Back in the old days people used to think that hot fudge sundaes were bad for you. Little did they know then what we know now!"

[Cooter]

That was Sleeper.

[B Knotts]

Yes. That was from Sleeper.

[blackdog]

You will also notice that a fine chocolate tells your pallet that you don't need more. A small piece will satisfy. Fine dark chocolates also match well with many fine red wines. And as for how well it matches with a fine cup of espresso(the only real way to drink coffee), one needs to find that out on their own. Words cannot describe.

Milk chocolate, filtered cigarettes, lite beer, drip coffee, margarine, half and half, non dairy creamer, drive up windows, and factory produced meats are illnesses Americans developed. Items made for the sole reason to get you to eat more, get fat, and smoke twice as much.

[blackdog]

Pure Delight.....Low Carb Chocolate? Contradictory terms.

[Geezerette]

I prefer dark chocolate, too! Milk chocolate is too sweet and makes me nauseous.

Imagine ... that dark choc. bar with coconut (Mounds?) even has an almond in it (if I remember right) ... so should really be a nutritious bonus!! ;-)

Glad to hear the good news!!

g