IT’S what chocoholics have always dreamed of hearing. Scientists have announced that their favourite treat is actually better for them than fruit.
Not only that, but chocolate is being heralded as the latest “super food”.
So it’s goodbye to the feeling of guilt over reaching for just one more truffle or secretly nibbling away at a melt-in-the-mouth bar between meals.
Addicts can break out a box of soft centres to celebrate the revelation that chocolate’s health-boosting potential could turn it into a lifesaver.
Researchers have proved that it is packed with more healthy plant compounds and antioxidants gram-for-gram than fruit juice and provides far more nutritional goodness than food experts had previously thought.
Dark chocolate
The verdict came after US scientists compared cocoa powder, the raw ingredient of chocolate, with powders made from fruits like acai berries, blueberries, cranberries and pomegranates, the “super fruits” known for powerful health-giving properties.
Research into dark chocolate, containing around 60 per cent cocoa, and cocoa drinks found that they too had more antioxidant activity and more flavanols – health-giving plant chemicals – than fruit. Only mugs of hot chocolate let the theory down. They have few healthy ingredients because the drink has been processed.
The discovery means cocoa beans meet the nutritional criteria needed for fruits to be classed as “super fruits”, according to the scientists at the Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition.
“The compounds in dark chocolate are just as good as the botanical compounds in fruit,” said Dr Debra Miller, a senior member of the team.
“Cacao seeds should be considered a ‘super fruit’ and products derived from cacao seed extracts, such as natural cocoa powder and dark chocolate, as ‘super foods’.” It all sounds too good to be true for chocolate lovers – and it is. The findings do not alter the fact that their favourite is high in fat and sugar, meaning dieticians say it should be balanced with less yummy foods such as brown rice and pulses.
“Dark chocolate needs to be considered as more of a tropical fruit like avocado which has a high fat content so you need to moderate the calories side of things,” said Dr Miller.
“But people could create drinks and recipes containing cocoa to get the benefits without the calories.”
That’s the good news; the bad news is that more than one square a day isn’t so good for your heart
Eating a square of dark chocolate has just become sweeter: according to Italian researchers, dark chocolate in small quantities could do your heart, and not just your tastebuds, the world of good.
In a study involving over 2,000 people – the largest of its kind to date – researchers found that eating small amounts of dark chocolate was linked to lower levels of inflammation in the body – enough to cut risk of cardiovascular disease by a third in women and a quarter in men. But don’t consider that licence to wolf down an entire bar. The heart health benefits noted were lost when people ate larger quantities – a rather measly 6.7 grams per day (about a square) was found to be the ideal amount for the best protective effect.
The results, published in the Journal of Nutrition, are the first to be published from one of the largest ongoing population studies conducted in Europe. The Moli-Sani Project has already recruited 20,000 people living in the Molise region in Southern Italy. By studying a healthy selection of those recruited, the researchers were able to look at the effect of dark chocolate consumption on chronic inflammation.
A long-term inflammatory state increases the risk of many cardiovascular diseases, including heart attack and stroke. One protein, called C reactive protein, is considered a particularly reliable marker for identifying inflammation – high levels in the blood mean high inflammation and the protein can be easily detected by a blood test. The researchers wanted to examine whether the high levels of antioxidants contained in cocoa seeds, in particular flavonoids and other kinds of poly-phenols, could have beneficial effects on the body’s inflammatory state.
Healthy recruits completed detailed food frequency questionnaires to determine how much chocolate they consumed per week and which kind. A standard portion of chocolate was considered 20g (about two squares). Other known risk factors for heart disease were also taken into account, including smoking, social status, weight and fitness levels.
Blood samples were taken from a control group of around 1,300 recruits who didn’t eat chocolate of any kind and then from the test group of 824 people who regularly ate chocolate, but only the dark type.
The dark chocolate eaters had a 17 per cent reduction in levels of C reactive protein in their blood compared with the abstainers, even when the results were adjusted to take into account all the other possible factors that could affect the results.
However, it seems as though you can have too much of a good thing. While increasing dark chocolate consumption produced an initial drop in C reactive protein levels, the drop reached a plateau at higher intakes and even reversed the benefits at the highest levels.
‘We are talking of a moderate consumption,’ says Romina di Giuseppe, lead author of the study. ‘The best effect is obtained by consuming an average amount of 6.7 grams of chocolate per day, corresponding to a small square of chocolate twice or three times a week. Beyond these amounts the beneficial effect tends to disappear.’
It seems that milk chocolate is unlikely to offer any similar protective benefits, either. ‘Previous studies have demonstrated that milk interferes with the absorption of polyphenols,’ explains Giuseppe. ‘That is why our study considered just the dark chocolate.’