Benefits of Cocoa highlighted at The National Academies

Today I found researchon unexpectedly large benefits of healthy chocolate on cardiovascular system and cancer. I just pulled parts of this article, you will find a link to the full article below.

10/02/06 The cocoa plant (Theobroma cacao) holds tremendous potential to impact public health and improve the socioeconomic and ecological landscape of the countries where it's grown, according to leading world scientists who convened at the National Academies to examine the latest scientific advances in cocoa research.

Building on the first-ever cocoa science symposium held at The National Academies in 2004, the symposium brought together a multi-disciplinary international group of scientists from the public and private sectors to review the most recent scientific advances related to cocoa - from its potential to improve public health to its role in preserving the tropical ecosystems where cocoa is grown.

Symposium co-chair Helmut Sies, MD, Professor at Heinrich-Heine University in Germany added, "Based on the exciting research findings presented today and published recently in leading scientific journals, we are witnessing an explosion of cocoa science that has the potential to change the lives of people in terms of their health and their ability to impact the environment."

Norman Hollenberg, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, presented epidemiological findings that suggest flavanol-rich foods, such as specific cocoas, could provide an unexpectedly large benefit in the management of the two most common causes of death in today's world: cardiovascular disease and cancer.

"Our results indicate that a flavanol-rich diet may provide an extraordinary benefit in the reduction of the two deadliest diseases in today's world," said Hollenberg, who has been working with the Kuna Indians for more than 10 years. "Though preliminary, the data collected thus far are striking in terms of both risk reduction and potential public health significance. Further research is clearly warranted to conclusively define the relationship between consumption of dietary flavanols and incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer in this population, as well as others."

Hagen Schroeter, PhD, faculty member at UC, Davis, and Christian Heiss, MD, at UC, San Francisco, co-authors on the study published in PNAS, presented additional new data at the symposium demonstrating that the cardiovascular benefits observed following consumption of a flavanol-rich cocoa are not merely dependent on so-called antioxidant effects. "The concept that the benefits derived from cocoa consumption are solely related to antioxidant properties represent a view that is not accurate," said Schroeter. "Furthermore, most of the flavanols present in plasma have been altered by the body following consumption, and are known to have even less antioxidant potential than their parent flavanols. Therefore, the specific flavanol content and composition of cocoa, and the cardiovascular activities they exhibit beyond their antioxidant effects, are far more interesting and important to public health researchers."

For the complete article on this, goto: http://www.nutritionhorizon.com/newsmaker_article.asp?idNewsMaker=10178&fSite=AO545&category=26&page=1


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