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Dark chocolate antioxidants; is chocolate healthy? Cocoa nutrients help lower blood pressure and reduce blood clots!Dark Chocolate is packed with Antioxidants Is Chocolate Healthy? Cocoa nutrients help lower blood pressure and reduce blood clots! It's
the best medical news in ages; studies in two prestigious scientific
journals say dark chocolate antioxidants; but not white chocolate or
milk chocolate; are good for you! 
Dark Chocolate Lowers Blood PressureDark chocolate can lower high blood pressure, says Dirk Taubert, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Cologne, Germany. Their report appears in the Aug. 27 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. But they are not giving us license to go on a chocolate binge! Eating more dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure; if you have mild high blood pressure, but of course we have to balance the extra calories by eating less of other things. Antioxidants in Dark Chocolate Dark chocolate is very potent, but the same can't be said of white chocolate, or milk chocolate. [Report from Mauro Serafini, PhD, of Italy's National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research in Rome] Their report appears in the Aug. 28 issue of Nature. Antioxidants destroy free radicals; destructive molecules that are implicated in heart disease and other chronic diseases.
Findings indicate that milk may interfere with the absorption of antioxidants from chocolate, and we amy miss out on the potential health benefits that we can get from eating moderate amounts of dark chocolate; so if "health" is your reason for eating chocolate, remember "moderate" and "dark" as you enjoy! So what is it about dark chocolate? Plant phenols; flavonoids, and procyanidin. prevent cancer, heart disease, and stroke, but processing decreases these antioxidants!The answer is plant phenols; these compounds are known to lower blood pressure. Chocolate and cocoa powder are derived from beans from the fruit of the cacao tree; a fruit that is a rich source of these potentially beneficial substances that contain large quantities of natural antioxidants called flavonoids, and procyanidin.These anti-oxidants are thought to be effective in helping to prevent cancer, heart disease, and stroke; but processing decreases these antioxidants; Chocolate is derived from cocoa beans; so the less processing the better! Chocolate made in Europe are generally richer in cocoa phenols than those made in the U.S. So if you're going to try this at home, remember: Darker is better...dark chocolate antioxidants! Just remember to balance the calories. A 100-gram serving of Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Bar has 531 calories, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A hint: Don't replace healthy foods with chocolate. Most people's diets have plenty of sweets; switch those for some chocolate.
dark chocolate antioxidants Cocoa has more phenolic phytochemicals/Pubmed Effect of dark chocolate on arterial function Dark Chocolate Has Health Benefits/Web MD The emerging role of flavonoid-rich cocoa and chocolate/Pubmed A 1.4-ounce piece of milk chocolate typically has 400 milligrams of anti-oxidants, as much as in a glass of red wine, says chemist Joe A. Vinson of the University of Scranton. Dark chocolate antioxidants..... white chocolate, few. The
anti-oxidant activity jumped 31% in the blood of subjects at the
University of California, Davis, two hours after eating 2.8 ounces of
M&Ms semisweet baking bits.
The dark chocolate antioxidants help block chemical changes in bad LDL cholesterol that lead to clogged arteries. In fact, it has been found that chocolate is better than vitamin C at detoxifying LDLs! Research by Penny Kris-Etherton at Pennsylvania State University shows that diets rich in dark chocolate antioxidants or cocoa powder raise [good] HDL cholesterol. dark chocolate antioxidants; Clot un-blocker. The anti-oxidants in cocoa act like aspirin to reduce blood platelet stickiness and the clotting and plaque build up that causes heart disease, heart attacks and strokes. Blood Vessel relaxant. Healthy blood vessels help prevent heart disease, high blood pressure and artery clogging. Chocolate's antioxidants (called procyanidins) relax vessels by increasing the chemical nitric oxide. You may wonder ... Won't chocolate make me fat? Chocolate has a lot of fat and sugar, so of course you don't want to overindulge, but chocolate has not been found to be a prime cause of obesity. The Swiss eat twice as much chocolate per person as we do; 22 pounds a year! But they also have one of the lowest obesity rates! Chocolate alone can't be blamed!
About 60% of chocolate's fat is saturated, and a typical chocolate bar contains 8 grams of saturated fat, so bingeing on chocolate drives up your intake of saturated fat, but moderate amounts do not appear harmful. Research at Harvard found women who ate chocolate bars three or four times a week were no more likely to have heart disease than women who rarely ate chocolate.
Isn't the sugar in chocolate unhealthy? No-one can call sugar healthy, but a chocolate bar's glycemic index [a measure of ability to drive up blood sugar] is surprisingly low, about like oatmeal's! What about the caffeine in chocolate? A dark chocolate bar has about 10-30mg of caffeine next to the 100mg in a cup of coffee.
Research conducted at the University of Scranton has found that the
quality and quantity of the dark chocolate antioxidants are very high
relative to other common foods and beverages such as black tea, red
wine, raisins, strawberries, pinto beans and other plant products.Cocoa powder ranked the highest of the chocolate products, followed by dark chocolate and milk chocolate. Dark chocolate contains about eight times the polyphenol antioxidants as strawberries, which rank high among the fruits.
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