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.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Fine dark chocolates also match well with many fine red wines.

Hear, here!

Red wine molecule shown to extend life - US study
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/969650/posts

[PBRSTREETGANG]

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

Purely in the interests of scientific research, I hereby volunteer for the larger, longer-term studies.

[Fester Chugabrew]

[mhking]

Here. Have some chocolate.

Just damn.

If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

[blackdog]

Coffee flavoids too. Of course those flavoids are destroyed in drip and perked coffee.

[TroutStalker]

You will also notice that a fine chocolate tells your pallet that you don't need more.

While working in the industry, I don't think I ever reached that point. Nothing beats breaking a ten pound bar of cool dark chocolate and popping a large chip into your mouth to suck on. In my twenty years of chocolates making, I often ate a pound a day, for quality control, you know.

[RedWhiteBlue]

Well, then, a dark chocolate and red wine tasting must be the perfect gift of health! THIS is what I am buying hubby for his birthday. Dark chocolate is his favorite. I will also buy the appropriate wines (not from France) to go with the dark chocolates.

[bird4four4]

[Grammy]

This could explain my excellent blood pressure numbers (and my cheerful personality!)

Who cares what the question is. The answer is chocolate.

[Grampa Dave]

A long standing joke between my wife and I, is me saying, "Dark Chocolate, my sweetheart?"

[Grampa Dave]

A chunk of wild salmon done on a grill covered with smashed blue berries in a Pinot Noir sauce, with Pinot Noir to enjoy followed with dark chocolate is now good for us. God is good!

[shiva]

I'm with ya, Randy........Love That Chocolate!

[shiva]

Just saw something new at the store......DARK chocolate Hershey Kisses.

[shiva]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=236400

[SupplySider]

Agree 100% especially about chocolate with espresso. I do that before I exercise every day. I've tried a lot of different chocolates and like most of them. My favorite might be dark Lindor with the liquid dark center.

[shiva]

Sorry !!!!!Ignore my last post. That was the wrong web page. This is what I meant to post.



http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030731/phth019_1.html

[MinuteGal]

Science finally caught up with me. I don't eat candy except imported Swiss or German dark or bittersweet choc bars, Dove choc ice cream bars with dark choc coating, and Fanny May creams coated with dark choc.

Hershey's dark chocolate bars are like biting into lardified frisbees.

(Once in a while, I do indulge in a Fanny May root beer barrel, yum yum.

Leni

[Oberon]

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.

In his several books about beer, food critic Michael Jackson mentions that many of the richer stouts are very good accompaniment to dark chocolate. Some stouts actually include small amounts of cocoa as a flavoring agent.

Of course, if you sit down to a pint of Dominion Imperial Stout and four ounces of Belgian dark chocolate, you might as well skip dinner...

[SupplySider]

I'm into the Belgian bars that say "80% cocoa" on the label :)

[lorrainer]

Speaking of centers, an employee of mine used to go to Europe and bring back chocolates filled with WHIPPED CREAM that had been flavored with LIQUEURS. Not available in this country that I know of--because of the liquor?