Super Foods -> Dark Chocolate

We’ve saved the best news for when you need it the most. As you slog through the winter doldrums, here’s the health update that could carry you through until spring: Dark chocolate is a SuperFood. For many of us, this is a dream come true. The interesting thing is that many people have told me that once they think of chocolate as a food that’s beneficial to health, even though they still love and enjoy it, because it’s no longer “forbidden,” they’re somehow less tempted to gorge on it.

This news doesn’t mean that you should toss out the oatmeal and fill your cabinets with chocolate. Pause for a moment and let the chocolate watchwords sink in:

• Keep your daily dark chocolate intake to about 100 calories per day.
• Eat only dark chocolate.

First, and most important, is the amount of chocolate: You can’t eat as much as you want. It’s high in calories and if you eat too much of it you can gain weight. Depending on your weight and activity level, chocolate should be a small treat, a little healthy indulgence that will have to be accounted for in your overall calorie intake/activity equation.

When you do indulge in chocolate and you’re looking for a health benefit, choose dark chocolate. Milk chocolate or white chocolate (the latter isn’t even real chocolate) won’t do. While both contain some of the beneficial polyphenols (though in lower amounts than dark chocolate), preliminary data suggest that the presence of milk in the chocolate somehow mitigates the effectiveness of the polyphenols.

Here, in a nutshell, is the good news: Dark chocolate seems to contribute to lowering blood pressure, increasing blood flow, and ultimately contributing to a healthy heart.

It’s a myth that chocolate is loaded with caffeine. While there is some caffeine in chocolate, it’s not much. In a typical chocolate bar, the caffeine content ranges from 1 to 11 mg. An 8-ounce cup of coffee has about 137 mg of caffeine.

In the early 1908, a physician and researcher at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Norman K. Hollenberg, was interested to observe that the Kuna Indians, the indigenous residents of the San Bias Islands of Panama, rarely develop high blood pressure even as they aged. Studies indicated that neither their salt intake nor obesity was a factor in this seeming immunity. Moreover, when the islanders moved to the mainland, their incidence for hypertension soared to typical levels, so their protection from hypertension was probably not due to genetics. Hollenberg noticed one facet of Indian culture that might play a role: The San Bias Is- land Kuna routinely drank about five cups of locally grown, minimally processed, high-flavonol cocoa each day. He gave his study subjects cocoa with either high or low amounts of flavonols. Those who drank the high-flavonol cocoa had more nitric oxide activity than those drinking the low-flavonol cocoa. The connection between the ability of the nitric oxide to relax the blood vessels and improve circulation and thus prevent hypertension seemed obvious. Hollenberg is continuing his investigation. He recently completed a pilot study that found that subjects who drank a cup of high-flavonol cocoa had a resulting increased flow of blood to the brain that averaged 33 percent.

Another interesting study looked at the blood flow effects of high-flavonol cocoa compared with low-dose aspirin. The study compared how blood platelets reacted to a flavonol-rich cocoa drink versus a blood-thinning dose of 8i-mg aspirin. It seems that the twenty- to forty-year-olds who participated in this study enjoyed similar blood-thinning results from both the cocoa and the low-dose aspirin. It must be noted that the effects of the flavonol-rich cocoa were more transitory than those of the aspirin.

Sip your way to winter health…. Need another reason to curl up by the tire with a mug of cocoa? In a recent study, researchers at Cornell University found that a mug of hot cocoa has nearly twice the antioxidants of a glass of red wine and up to three times those found in a cup of green tea. Make your cocoa with 1 % low-fat milk, nonfat milk, or soymilk and sweeten it with minimal sugar. Avoid cocoa mixes, as they are high in sugar or artificial sweeteners and some contain trans fats. And Dutch-process cocoa is cocoa powder that has been treated with alkaline compounds to neutralize the natural acids. It’s slightly milder than natural cocoa, but it has lower levels of flavonols so, for health purposes, stick with natural cocoa. SOURCE ARTICLE HERE