Research promising for chocolate lovers

[papau]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/diet.fitness/08/19/chocolate.health.ap/index.html

Research promising for chocolate lovers

Friday, August 19, 2005; Posted: 10:28 a.m. EDT (14:28 GMT)

<snip>Despite the enthusiasm, flavanols are missing from much of the chocolate on store shelves today. Flavanols make chocolate and cocoa taste bitter, and confectioners have spent years trying to perfect ways to remove the pungent flavor.

"Most chocolate, in fact, isn't flavanol-rich," said Norm Hollenberg, a radiology professor and flavanol expert at Harvard Medical School. "But all chocolate is rich in fat and calories. Chocolate is a delight. It can and should be part of a prudent diet. That means you limit what you take."

Flavanols are found in other foods, such as red wine, grapes, apples and green tea, although cocoa beans are a particularly rich source.<snip>

<snip>Researchers are excited by the potential of flavanols to ward off vascular disease, which can cause heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, dementia and hypertension. Vascular diseases are linked to the artery's inability to make a simple but fundamental chemical called nitric oxide. Flavanols appear to reverse that problem.

"The pharmaceutical industry has spent tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars in search of a chemical that would reverse that abnormality," Hollenberg said. "And God gave us flavanol-rich cocoa, which does that. So the excitement is real."

[etherealtruth]

1. Life IS promising for chocolate lovers ...

:9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9

[rman]

2. rations are up?

the recent flood of stories about chocolate make me uneasy....

[supernova]

3. As it is, if you want to get the flavanols

you have to buy the higher % cocoa butter gourmet chocolate bars. I mean the 60, 70, and 80 % kind. At that level, chocolate can have a spicy taste, and very little sugar. The good news is you get very little sugar, and some fibre, so it does feel more like regular food and not just "candy."

[papau]

4. True - bitter chocolate is an aquired taste - but I like it!

:-)

Besides it is not that bitter - you just notice the lack of sugar.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Or use bitter chocolate to make mole sauce

:7

[supernova]

6. There you go

Mole! :9 :9 :9

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. I made some just this past week

"Yum" is right.