Content provided in partnership with
Technology Industry
Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedChocolate Hearts - research indicates chocolate contains antioxidants called flavonoids that reduce risk of cardiovascular disease
Science News, March 18, 2000 by Janet Raloff
Yummy and good medicine?
More than 35 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate changed hands in the United States on Valentine's Day this year. The holiday's total chocolate sales approached $1 billion. Yet this confection's link to hearts is extending even beyond the lucrative candy business.
Chocolate and cocoa powder are derived from beans that contain hefty quantities of natural antioxidants called flavonoids. In recent years, research has correlated consumption of tea, red wine, and other foods rich in these compounds with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
Realizing that this observation might transform chocolate's reputation from junk food into health-promoting snack, candy companies and the American Cocoa Research Institute (ACRI) in McLean, Va., have begun pumping money into studies of chocolate's antioxidants.
Those investments now hint at big pay-offs. New findings--many reported for the first time last month in Washington, D.C., at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)--suggest that chocolate's chemistry confers cardiovascular benefits.
Though preliminary, the research indicates that cocoa and chocolates not only contain natural compounds that can protect the heart and blood vessels but also that the quantities present in commercial products may be sufficient to exert measurable effects.
These studies are prompting manufacturers to reevaluate how they make chocolate, since some techniques unintentionally eliminate flavonoids. Mars, Inc., recently developed a proprietary process to preserve flavonoids. By next month, the company plans to be labeling U.S. products made with the process, which they call Cocoapro. Then, observes Harold H. Schmitz, Mars' director of nutrition and analytical services in Hackettstown, N.J., consumers can identify chocolates retaining much of a cocoa bean's initial flavonoid riches.
A 40-gram serving of milk chocolate typically contains around 400 milligrams of antioxidants, about the same quantity as a glass of red wine, according to research published last year by Joe A. Vinson of the University of Scranton (Pa.). Dark-chocolate aficionados will be happy to learn that a serving of their favorite contains more than twice that quantity--roughly the same amount as a cup of black tea. Unsweetened powdered cocoa starts out with almost twice as much of these antioxidants as dark chocolate. But to make a cup of hot chocolate, the cocoa is diluted with water or milk and sugar, so the flavonoid total per serving plummets to about half of that present in milk chocolate.
At least as important as the total amount of flavonoids, however, is the potency of these antioxidants, Vinson notes. And the potency of those in chocolate is impressive, his team reported in the December 1999 JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD CHEMISTRY.
Vinson and his colleagues found that, matched molecule for molecule, chocolates flavonoids are more powerful than vitamins such as ascorbic acid in limiting the oxidation of cholesterol circulating in low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) and very-low-density lipoproteins. Atherosclerosis studies have suggested that oxidation of these lipoproteins is an essential step in the creation of artery-clogging plaque.
Vinson, whose work was supported by ACRI, doesn't know which chocolate products the institute gave him to test or the complex mix of flavonoids within them.
Yet individual flavonoids--some 4,000 have been identified in plant products so far--vary not only in potency but also in mode of action. The primary family of flavonoids contributing to the antioxidant prowess of chocolates is the procyanidins, notes Schmitz. Their basic unit is a three-ring molecular structure. The mature cocoa bean contains pairs known as dimers, triads known as trimers, quartets known as tetramers, and larger ensembles of these units.
Test-tube studies by German scientists recently showed that chocolate's tetramers were the top performers among this group in curbing the type of oxidation that free radicals can wreak in blood vessel walls. That's potentially important, Schmitz notes, because such naturally occurring radicals can inflame vessels, a process that fosters a dangerous rupturing of atherosclerotic plaque (SN: 2/6/99, p. 86).
Chocolate's tetramers and larger procyanidins also help relax the inner surface of blood vessels, according to studies in isolated tissues headed by C. Tissa Kappagoda of the University of California, Davis School of Medicine.
This relaxation "is a major player in vascular health," he explains. People in whom it's absent or grossly impaired often have high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, or other symptoms of cardio-vascular disease.
In healthy blood vessels, Kappagoda noted at the AAAS meeting, much of this relaxation is controlled by the production of nitric oxide (SN: 3/23/96, p. 180). His research, funded by Mars, indicates that chocolate's compounds exert their relaxing effect by increasing nitric oxide concentrations.
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: News
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »