Chocolate: Luxury Item or Survival Tool?

from WebMD Health
From Medscape Health

Introduction
Zero tolerance for smuggled snacks and no time for private pleasures… No one said being a Survivor "down under" would be easy. For the Outback warriors trying to scheme their ways to fame and fortune, a Hershey's bar may be just another off-limits luxury. For those of us watching the games at home, however, a little chocolate therapy may be a pretty sound "survival" tool after all.

It has long been known that the dark, mysterious essence of the cocoa plant exercises powerful forces over the mind and psyche, providing a strange, and some say, addictive, lift and sensation of well-being. Better than that, though, according to a recent study, cocoa--the heart and soul of chocolate --may save lives.

In the study, published last year in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, some researchers in California have found that cocoa may prevent some deaths from coronary heart disease. In other words, those chocolate hearts are good for flesh-and-blood hearts!

As for the heart benefits, the scientists who did the study theorized that chocolate contained antioxidant substances called polyphenols that might prevent the blood cells known as platelets from clumping together into heart-attack producing clots.

The scientists took blood from 30 healthy people 2 and 6 hours after drinking a cocoa beverage (for some), coffee for others, and water by the remaining controls. Then they analyzed the subjects' sticky platelets. They found that the chocolate drink suppressed platelet activation and had an aspirin-like effect on clotting. And this effect continued for a number of hours and could be detected when checked 6 hours after the chocolate was consumed. The people who drank the coffee and water experienced a resumption of platelet activity well before the 6-hour mark.

Chocolate Pigout in Order?

Alas, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to set a daily minimum requirement for chocolate: Don't charge over to Godiva for "medical reasons" just yet. Registered dietician and nutritionist Penny Kris-Etherton, PhD, RD, professor of nutrition at Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, agrees that chocolate is a potent antioxidant, but she says that it also has a price tag. "You have to be careful not to eat too much. It does have sugar and calories," she notes. "Flavenoids are bitter, so lots of sugar has to be added."

At the risk of taking the fun out of yet another culinary delicacy, here are some ways to get your daily chocolate "fix" without breaking the calorie bank:

Eat one, but only one, gourmet chocolate treat, like a truffle surrounded by fluffy tissue or in a little individual tray.

Prepare chocolate pudding with skim or low-fat milk and eat only half a cup. (A little low-fat topping is also allowed--we won't tell.)

Kiss yourself seven or eight times: Hershey's Kisses in a modest handful are under 200 calories.

How about chocolate sorbet? No fat and moderate calories.

Ancient Peoples Didn't Count Calories

Chocolate was first discovered and grown 3 million years ago in eastern Mexico. It was also used as money and in sacred rites in the Mayan and Aztec cultures. These ancient peoples also knew chocolate was therapeutic and used it to heal various ailments.

Can the wisdom of the ages be wrong? Not only might chocolate simulate Prozac and prevent some blood clots, but it also may boost immune function and suppress oxidation of the "bad" LDL cholesterol.

Antioxidants, incidentally, are substances that prevent free radical molecules of oxygen from forming and bouncing around and bashing healthy cells into bits. Lest the national nannies wave a finger at chocolate as an antioxidant, research shows that a 1.55-ounce dark chocolate bar contains 5,765 oxidant points for 227 calories, and a light chocolate chunk 2,296 oxidant points and a like amount of calories. Compare this to another flavenoid-loaded drink, Concord grape juice (similar to the boost provided the heart by red wine), with 2,608 antioxidant points. Though a good antioxidant, blueberries fall to the rear at 1,750 points and the much-touted and healthful green tea has only 1,628. Chocolate rules!

"You can eat some in the context of a healthy diet and not feel guilty," Kris-Etherton says. The operative words there: "some" and "healthy."

Furthermore, scientists have shown that the substance has many of the same mood-elevating, chemical properties of the antidepressant, Prozac, triggering the pleasure chemical in the brain known as serotonin.

Chocolate, it seems, contains phenylethylamine, a sort of love drug released during sex. PEA, as scientists call it, is one of three substances in the body that cause sexual attraction--the others being dopamine and norepinephrine. The three together cause feelings of euphoria and uncertainty, then desire (if that doesn't describe love, what does?). On the flip side, post-romance depression, the scientists speculate, may result when PEA leaves the body--thus the urge to reach for the Double Chocolate Chunk Ripple.

: © 2001 WebMD, Inc.