Interesting Chocolate Tidbits

Health & Wellness

Researchers at Harvard University suggest that people who eat chocolate 3 times a month will live almost a year longer than those who do not. However, those who eat too much chocolate will have a lower life expectancy due to its high fat content which can lead to obesity and related health conditions, including an increased risk of heart disease.

Chocolate - a cough medicine

Research suggests that it may be possible for chocolate to be considered a cough medicine. Scientists found the key ingredient of chocolate, Theobromine, to be nearly a third more effective in stopping persistent coughs than the leading medicine Codeine and with fewer side effects, including drowsiness. "Coughing is a medical condition which affects most people at some point in their lives, and yet no effective treatment exists. While persistent coughing is not necessarily harmful it can have a major impact on quality of life, and this discovery could be a huge step forward in treating this problem." The researches gave 10 healthy volunteers Theobromine or a placebo or Codeine, and then exposed the volunteers to Capsaicin, a substance used in clinical research to cause coughing. The concentration of Capsaicin required to produce a cough in people given Theobromine was approximately one third higher when compared with the group who received the placebo. When the group received Codeine, they needed only slightly higher levels of Capsaicin to produce coughing, compared with the placebo. Theobromine is claimed to work by suppressing nerve activity, which is responsible for causing coughing.

Chocolate Toothpaste - for preventing tooth decay

According to scientists at Japan's Osaka University, chocolate could help prevent tooth decay. The husks of the cocoa beans from which chocolate is made contain an antibacterial agent that fights plaque. These husks are usually discarded in chocolate production but in the future they could be added back into chocolate to make it dental-friendly. They concluded that the cavity-fighting action of cocoa bean husks isn't enough to offset decay caused by chocolate's high sugar content, so chocolate will not replace toothpaste any time soon.

Chocolate - to help fight heart disease

Professor Carl Keen and his team suggest that chocolate may help fight heart disease because it contains chemicals called Flavinoids, which are responsible for thinning the blood and help to prevent clotting. This appears to be in line with the same suggestion made about red wine.

For more information on these chocolate health & wellness tidbits, please see the published article in the FASEB journal.