Prescription Strength Chocolate, Revisited By Janet Raloff

This report was posted on the sciencenews.org site

For roughly a decade, science-savvy chocolate consumers have taken comfort from a string of studies suggesting that their sweet and usually high-fat vice has a potential up side. The most reassuring news was that the antioxidant flavonoids abundant in dark chocolate appear to reduce blood pressure and perhaps protect people from dangerous blood clots.

Raw cocoa beans, shown here nestled in their pods, contain huge amounts of heart-healthy flavanols. Commercially processing the beans to make cocoa powder strips away most of those compounds. Mars, however, determined how to retain them to make flavanol-rich cocoa for research trials—and for what it's now marketing as a heart-healthy snack. USDA

At the Cocoa Symposium, convened at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, researchers reported new findings on chocolate's biological impacts. The studies focus on specific flavonoids in chocolate, such as epicatechin, that offer the strongest cardiovascular benefits. The bad news: Most commercial products—even dark chocolates—retain few if any of these natural, plant-based chemicals.

However, the new data do suggest how chocolatiers might tailor their candy recipes to preserve—and potentially even augment—concentrations of beneficial flavonoids. The new studies also might provide some reasons that diets rich in fruits and vegetables are good for people's hearts.

"Cocoa is a fruit," notes chemist Harold H. Schmitz, chief science officer for Mars Inc., the world's largest chocolate manufacturer. Those flavonoids in cocoa that appear to confer the strongest cardiovascular benefits are found in plenty of other dietary sources as well, including tea and apples. Indeed, he says, any of these plant products might yield bioactive compounds that could fight heart disease.

For the complete article on this, go to: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060225/food.asp

However, our Healthy Great Tasting Chocolate is different it does retain the natural, plant-based chemicals because our cocoa is cold processed and has no sugar or preservatives added! While retaining all the benefits of the chocolate.
For more information on our Chocolate, go to:
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