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Why is Chocolate Healthy?, Part 2 |
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The Panama Paradox
Antioxidants may not be the only heart-healthy compounds in chocolate. You've heard of the French Paradox, right? The fact that the French eat more saturated fat than do Americans but have much lower rates of heart disease? The paradox is that saturated fat is supposed to clog the arteries. The answer? The polyphenols in all that red wine the French drink help to protect their arteries against the damaging effects of all that fat.
Now, let's talk about the Panama Paradox. On a group of islands off the coast of Panama dwell the Kuna people. This indigenous group eats a traditional diet high in salt, yet they have extremely low blood pressure. As did their Central American ancestors, the Kuna drink about five cups of chocolate a day. Could the chocolate be responsible for their low blood pressure? It seemed possible, because blood pressure rose in the Kuna who moved to urban Panama City and stopped consuming their traditional diet.
To test chocolate's role in this, Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard University, fed Boston volunteers either typical commercial milk chocolate or dark chocolate bars. Those who consumed the dark chocolate at levels equivalent to the cocoa intake of |
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Cancer and Alzheimer's Disease |
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Cancer
A study at the University of Hawaii's Cancer Research Center found that those who ate the most flavonoids in their diet had a 40 to 50 percent reduced rate of lung cancer. A study of 6,000 Italian citizens found that those who ate at least ten different varieties of vegetables weekly were 30 percent less likely to develop colorectal cancer than those people that ate less than 7 varieties weekly. The antioxidants in vegetables are the suspected reason. And in the most thorough study done to date, a twenty-four-year Finnish study of 10,000 people, those who consumed the most flavonoids were 20 percent less likely to develop any form of cancer than those who consumed the fewest.
Studies on mice have shown that the flavonoids in tea protect against skin tumors, lung cancer, and digestive cancer. In addition, lab cellular studies demonstrated that tea flavonoids inhibited the reproduction of human leukemia and lung carcinoma cells. A team at Georgetown University is currently working on isolating the flavonoids in chocolate and testing them as an anticancer drug.
At the Arizona Cancer Center, 140 smokers were given either green tea, black tea, or water for four months to study the effect on a particular |
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Arthritis, Asthma, and Allergies |
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Arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis tortures the lives of more than two million people in the United States. But a recent study of mice showed that the polyphenols in green tea may significantly reduce one's risk of getting the disease. In the study, 36 mice were injected with collagen, which induces arthritis in rodents. Half the mice were fed the human equivalent of four cups of green tea per day. Of the 18 who didn't receive the green tea, 17 developed arthritis. Of the 18 who did receive the green tea, only 8 developed arthritis, and even in those mice it was a milder form of the disease. Scientists believe it is the anti-inflammatory power of tea's polyphenols that achieves the effect. Arthritis is partially caused by free radicals attacking the joint membranes and lubricants, leading to inflammation, so neutralizing the free radicals prevents the inflammation from forming in the first place.
Proanthocyanidin, the antioxidant in chocolate that may protect against Alzheimer's, may also reduce arthritis symptoms. Proanthocyanidin, which is also found in red wine, blocks the formation of enzymes in the body that cause inflammation.
Asthma and Allergies
For the same reasons that proanthocyanidin can reduce inflammation in arthritis sufferers, it can also reduce symptoms |
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Cardiovascular Disease |
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Though the studies have not yet been undertaken to prove it, there are strong reasons to believe that chocolate can help protect you against many other illnesses besides cardiovascular disease as well. We know that free radicals are associated with many of the diseases that are the scourge of modern societyeverything from cancer and Alzheimers disease to rheumatoid arthritis and cataracts. We know that antioxidants cleanse the body of free radicals. And we know that chocolate is abundant in flavonoids, some of the most potent polyphenol antioxidants known (100 times more potent than vitamin C).
Cardiovascular Disease
The evidence linking antioxidants to reduced cardiovascular disease is overwhelming. A study at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston of 1,800 nurses with histories of coronary problems found that women who consumed high amounts of antioxidant-rich foods had a 33 percent lower risk of heart attack and a 71 percent lower risk of stroke compared to women who ate few foods containing antioxidants.
Much of the best evidence involves consumption of red wine, which contains the same flavonoids (a subgroup of polyphenols) as chocolate. Huge studies, such as the American Cancer Society Study of 276,802 people and the Nurse's Health Study of 87,526 women, all |
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Chocolate Studies |
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All the things about the healthy chocolate are great in theory, but what about putting them to the test? Sure, polyphenols prevent heart disease, stroke, and other diseases, and cocoa is loaded with polyphenols, but has cocoa been proven to have health benefits? Let's look at the research.
A study at Pennsylvania State University had volunteers eat 22 grams of cocoa powder and 16 grams of dark chocolate in their daily diets. The volunteers had much improved cholesterol ratios, with more of the good HDL cholesterol and less of the bad LDL cholesterol. Most interesting, and surely related to chocolate's antioxidant effect, the LDL cholesterol that did exist seemed to be more resistant to oxidationthe process where it is "scuffed up" by free radicals and becomes more sticky. A similar study in 1996 found that subjects' LDL cholesterol was much more resistant to oxidation two hours after they had eaten 35 grams of cocoa powder. Another study conducted on cocoa-fed rabbits found the same effect.
We hesitate to tell you about this next study. The results sound so over-the-top that they can only make people look at you funny when you tell them. But you should probably tell them anyway. Two researchers |
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