Chocolate For Your Heart Health and Antioxidant

Want to improve your Hearth Health with tasty treat?
For many people around the world, life without chocolate would be dismal. Satiny dark or creamy, chocolate is a beloved food intimately linked with celebrations, comfort, indulgence, and extravagance. Its source is cacao, a small tree native to Central and South American forests that produces large pods packed with dark brown seeds. From the seeds come fragrant cocoa, luscious chocolate, and creamy cocoa butter. The cultivation of cacao may have originated with the Olmec culture of eastern Mexico more than 3,000 years ago. The Olmec, and later the Maya and Aztec, fermented, roasted, and then ground cacao seeds into a paste. Mixed with water, chili peppers, cornmeal, and other ingredients, it was whipped into a frothy, spicy chocolate drink. Both the drink and the seeds from which it was made were considered sacred. In ancient Mesoamerica, chocolate truly was “the food of the gods,” which is what Theobroma means.

Therapeutic Uses

Antioxidant

Heart health (including blood pressure and cholesterol levels)

Anti-inflammatory

As more studies emerge linking chocolate consumption to improved cardiovascular health, it is clear that chocolate is both a food and a medicine—not only good but also good for you. Chocolate’s main medicinal effects come from a group of compounds called polyphenols that are strongly antioxidant and anti-inflammatory; they also impart to chocolate its dark brown color. Similar compounds are found in green tea, red wine, and many fruits and vegetables. Interestingly, the polyphenols in chocolate seem to act as antioxidants that are stronger than antioxidants in other foods. In humans, these polyphenols are thought to act in several ways. They may stop one of the steps in the development of plaques in coronary arteries by decreasing the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or bad, cholesterol deposited there; hence, LDL plaque does not become as firmly established and is less likely to then rupture and clot, causing a heart attack. These polyphenols also increase the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or good, cholesterol protection against cardiovascular disease. These compounds also are mild inhibitors of platelet activity, thinning blood in an action similar to that of aspirin.

Another interesting component of chocolate is cocoa butter. By weight, much of chocolate is cocoa butter. Considered a “good” fat, cocoa butter contains oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat also found in olive oil; cocoa butter also contains stearic and palmitic acids, two saturated fats. In combination these fats seem to balance the benefit to the heart and cholesterol levels.

How to Use

Choose a dark chocolate of at least 70 percent cacao to maximize the polyphenol content—and the medicinal benefits—of this tasty treat.

Precautions

Due to the small amount of caffeine it contains, along with a related compound, theobromine, chocolate can be stimulating, making it hard to fall asleep after a late-night snack. The fat content of chocolate carries a calorie-heavy punch, so eating too much chocolate can add up. Also, as the percentage of cacao in chocolate drops, it is replaced with milk fats that diminish the benefits of cacao butter and bind healthy polyphenols, making them less absorbable.

Hope chocolate can give you a way to improve your heart health with joy!