Are There Benefits From Eating Chocolate?
Posted on 24 May 2010 by LynThomas in Health
A recent study of more than 19,000 Germans revealed that those who ate an average of seven or more grams of chocolate per day had lower blood pressure and a lower risk of stroke and heart attack.
“To put it in terms of absolute risk, if people eating the least amount of chocolate increased their intake by six grams a day, 85 fewer heart attacks and strokes per 10,000 people could be expected to occur over a period of about 10 years,” said lead researcher Brian Buijsse of the German Institute of Human Nutrition.
“Small amounts of chocolate may help to prevent heart disease, but only if it replaces other energy-dense food, such as snacks, in order to keep body weight stable,” Mr Buijsse said.
The Institute admits that more research needs to be done however, in order to explain why chocolate appears to help the heart.
Previous research has suggested that the answer may lie in complex molecules called flavanols, which recruit the gas nitric oxide to the cells that line the inner walls of blood vessels. Nitric oxide causes smooth muscles to relax, which may lower blood pressure.
Flavanols are found in cocoa – and as there is more cocoa in dark chocolate, this could explain why milk chocolate or white chocolate were found to be less effective.
Professor Peter Howe from the University of South Australia says the risk of heart attack and stroke was reduced by almost 40 per cent.
Other researchers say the cause of this is due to the fact that high amounts of antioxidant compounds known as Catechins helps protect against heart diseases.
The researcher, Frank Schab, said a memory strategy based on odor could help students studying for multiple exams, or airline pilots training for emergencies.
Students who were exposed to the smell of chocolate during a word exercise and again in the recall test, recalled an average of 21 percent of the words they had written. That was significantly better than the best average from the other groups, 17 percent. There were no differences in the effect between men and women.
However, Schab also found that chocolate and mothball odors worked equally well, suggesting that a smell’s pleasantness does not affect its power to stimulate memory.
The idea of chocolate being healthy is not a new one.
Henry Stubbe (1632-1676) was a physician who considered drinking chocolate once or twice a day an excellent cure for fatigue caused by hard work. He also believed that chocolate helped benefit the heart and that it helped increased breast milk production in women.
According to Baylor College of Medicine researcher Dr. Ken Goodrick. “Chocolate is seen as “naughty but nice”. It is tasty, but something which should be resisted. This suggests that the desire is more likely a cultural phenomenon than a physical one.”
