The article "Healthy Chocolate?" is about chocolate, it was written by Gerald Meyer.
It's great news that research found a food that lowers blood pressure and is healthy for the heart and myabe more.
The trouble is that the chocolate most Americans consume is not the same kind. The more popular kinds of cohcolate have little or no positive effect on your health. Only certain chocolate may be healthy.Dark chocolate is the chocolate that was found to have positive effects on blood pressure.
Participants gievn dark, milk, or white chocolate every day were evaluated in different studies.
It turns out that dark chocolate contains important antioxidants called phenols. These nautral compounds from the cocoa bean are known to raise nitric oxide, reduce platelet aggregation, and inhibit oxidation of LDL cholesterol. Cocoa can decrease blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, and raise your insulin snesitivity. Milk and white chocolate are low in these antioxidants and do not have the same effect.The trouble is how chocolate is processed in this country. White chocolate, regardless of where you get it, atcually contains no cocoa at all and is made only from cocoa butter; just the fat from the cocoa beans. It also contains no phenols. Most of the other chocolate we eat is made with "dutched" cocoa.
The cocoa beans are treated with an alkaline solution to make them dark in color and to reduce the natural bitterness from the plant.
But, it also reduces almost 90% of the phenols and most of its healthy benefits.
The other trouble is that when made into milk chocolate, the milk seems to prevent the phenols from being absorbed and, thus, negating any possible benefit from the chocolate.The best chocolate for your health appears to be dark chocolate.
In the Eruopean studies done, they ate 100gm of chocolate a day (100 grams equals approx. 3.5 ounces).
That's the equivalent to 2 1/2 regular size Hershey's bars. It also adds about 550 calories to the diet.
They were instructed to substitute this amount of caloires from other foods they normally ate each day. You wuold have to do the same or forego its healthy benefits by increasing your waistline. Eruopean chocolate in general is healthier than that found in America due to the fact that it is less processed than ours and contains more of the heart healthy antioxidants.
Dark chocolate is an acquired taste for most Americans for it is much more bitter than its mikly counterpart.So why is this research being touted as the 'best medical news in ages'? It appears to be one more way we look to justify the unhealthy diets we follow.
When people hear that chcoolate is at this moment healthy, they don't hear any of the other restrictions involved, and don't want to. In fact, most people wouldn't want to change to a more bitter tasting cohcolate and also cut out over 500 calories from their diets.
Our diets already have enough sweets and this type of news only fuels the diabetic and obesity epidemics. This kind of medical news will only make most people add extra calories to their diets and raise their health issues.Gerald Meyer RPh, provides advice on wegiht loss. Information on the benefits of green tea and its antioxidant powers can be found at http://www.Natural-weight-loss-programs.Com Free trials of green tea patches are available. Find out the benefit of green tea for yourself yesterday. Learn about the new superfood – the amazon super berry – acai. Acai may be the most nutritious food in the world. MonaVie is the next generation of health food.
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