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CHOCOLATE AS HEALTH FOOD


Boosting Diets and Heart Health by Judith Fertig “


toonist Sandra Boynton. American chocolate lovers buy 58 million-plus pounds around Valentine’s Day, ac- cording to Nielsen Research. Ideally, the dark treat would be as healthy as a salad or an apple. Fortunately, accumulating research is on the way to giving plant-based chocolate superfood status. All chocolate starts with cacao beans, seeds from the pods of the tropi- cal cacao tree that thrives only in hot, rainy climates in Africa, Indonesia and South America. Local soil and climate conditions determine flavor character- istics, much as with grapes. Harvested beans are fermented to create the choc- olate taste and then dried. Afterwards, chocolate makers add brand-specific ingredients to the cacao solids. “The percentage number on a bar’s wrapper represents the weight that actually comes from the cacao bean content,” says Robert L. Wolke, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh and author of What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained. “The higher the number, the lower the percentage of


R 24 Hudson County NAHudson.com


esearch tells us that 14 out of any 10 individuals like chocolate,” quips car-


sugar and the less sweet, more bitter and complex the flavor.”


This is significant because dark chocolate contains higher levels of anti- oxidants which can help reduce cell damage, according to the Integrative Medicine Department at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Alex Whitmore, founder of Taza


Chocolate, in Somerville, Massachu- setts, recently had one of its bars lab tested for antioxidant levels, called ORAC, or oxygen radical absorption capacity; the higher the value, the more antioxidants. Taza Chocolate’s 80% Dark Bar had a 65 percent higher ORAC than Himalayan goji berries, famed for being a superfood. “This is very high for a chocolate bar,” notes Whitmore.


Cocoa also serves as a superfood for cardiovascular and metabolic health, report two recent studies from separate teams of Harvard School of Public Health researchers. A 2012 meta-analysis of clinical trials published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that consuming dark, unsweetened cocoa powder and dark chocolate can improve blood pressure, vascular dilation and cholesterol levels, plus reduce metabolic precursors like dia- betes that can lead to heart disease. In 2011, Eric Ding, Ph.D., a Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist and nutrition sci- entist, reviewed short-term trials of subjects ingesting 400 to 500 mg per day of flavonoid-rich cocoa, which he equates to 33 bars of milk choco- late or eight bars of dark chocolate. While Ding feels this is an unreason- able amount to eat because of the extra calories from sugar and fat, he states, “Supplements with concen- trated cocoa flavonoids may perhaps be helpful for garnering the ben- efits discovered. The key is getting the benefits for heart disease while avoiding the calories, and for that, chocolate bars are not likely the best


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