Chocolate bits

Some Tasty Chocolate bits...Inspired from the seaside....

Startling Health Benefits of Chocolates

There is in fact a growing body of credible scientific evidence that chocolate contains a host of heart-healthy and mood-enhancing phytochemicals, with benefits to both body and mind.

For one, chocolate is a plentiful source of antioxidants. These are substances that reduce the ongoing cellular and arterial damage caused by oxidative reactions.

You may have heard of a type of antioxidants called polyphenols. These are protective chemicals found in plant foods such as red wine and green tea. Chocolate, it turns out, is particularly rich in polyphenols. According to researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the same antioxidant properties found in red wine that protect against heart disease are also found in comparable quantities in chocolate.

How does chocolate help to prevent heart disease? The oxidation of LDL cholesterol is considered a major factor in the promotion of coronary disease. When this waxy substance oxidizes, it tends to stick to artery walls, increasing the risk of a heart attack or stroke. But chocolate to the rescue! The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit oxidation of LDL cholesterol.

And there's more. One of the causes of atherosclerosis is blood platelets clumping together, a process called aggregation. The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit this clumping, reducing the risks of atherosclerosis.

High blood pressure is a well known risk factor for heart disease. It is also one of the most common causes of kidney failure, and a significant contributor to many kinds of dementia and cognitive impairment. Studies have shown that consuming a small bar of dark chocolate daily can reduce blood pressure in people with mild hypertension.

Why are people with risk factors for heart disease sometimes told to take a baby aspirin every day? The reason is that aspirin thins the blood and reduces the likelihood of clots forming (clots play a key role in many heart attacks and strokes). Research performed at the department of nutrition at the University of California, Davis, found that chocolate thins the blood and performs the same anti-clotting activity as aspirin. "Our work supports the concept that the chronic consumption of cocoa may be associated with improved cardiovascular health," said UC Davis researcher Carl Keen.

How much chocolate would you have to eat to obtain these benefits? Less than you might think. According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adding only half an ounce of dark chocolate to an average American diet is enough to increase total antioxidant capacity 4 percent, and lessen oxidation of LDL cholesterol.

Why, then, has chocolate gotten such a bum reputation? It's the ingredients we add to it. Nearly all of the calories in a typical chocolate bar are sugar and fat.

As far as fats go, it's the added fats that are the difficulty, not the natural fat (called cocoa butter) found in chocolate. Cocoa butter is high in saturated fat, so many people assume that it's not good for your cardiovascular system. But most of the saturated fat content in cocoa butter is stearic acid, which numerous studies have shown does not raise blood cholesterol levels. In the human body, it acts much like the monounsaturated fat in olive oil.

Milk chocolate, on the other hand, contains added butterfat which can raise blood cholesterol levels. And it has less antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals than dark chocolate.

Does chocolate contribute to acne? Milk chocolate has been shown to do so, but I've never heard of any evidence incriminating dark chocolate.

Dark chocolate is also healthier because it has less added sugar. I'm sure you don't need another lecture on the dangers of excess sugar consumption. But if you want to become obese and dramatically raise your odds of developing diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease, foods high in sugar (including high fructose corn syrup) are just the ticket.

Are chocolate's benefits limited to the health of the body? Hardly. Chocolate has long been renown for its remarkable effects on human mood. We are now beginning to understand why.

Chocolate is the richest known source of a little-known substance called theobromine, a close chemical relative of caffeine. Theobromine, like caffeine, and also like the asthma drug theophylline, belong to the chemical group known as xanthine alkaloids. Chocolate products contain small amounts of caffeine, but not nearly enough to explain the attractions, fascinations, addictions, and effects of chocolate. The mood enhancement produced by chocolate may be primarily due to theobromine.

Chocolate also contains other substances with mood elevating effects. One is phenethylamine, which triggers the release of pleasurable endorphins and potentates the action of dopamine, a neurochemical associated with sexual arousal and pleasure. Phenethylamine is released in the brain when people become infatuated or fall in love.

Another substance found in chocolate is anandamide (from the Sanskrit word "ananda," which means peaceful bliss). A fatty substance that is naturally produced in the brain, anandamide has been isolated from chocolate by pharmacologists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. It binds to the same receptor sites in the brain as cannabinoids -- the psychoactive constituents in marijuana -- and produces feelings of elation and exhilaration. (If this becomes more widely known, will they make chocolate illegal?)

If that weren't enough, chocolate also boosts brain levels of serotonin. Women typically have lower serotonin levels during PMS and menstruation, which may be one reason women typically experience stronger cravings for chocolate at these times in their cycles. People suffering from depression so characteristically have lower serotonin levels that an entire class of anti-depressive medications called serotonin uptake inhibitors (including Prozac, Paxil, and Zooloft) have been developed that raise brain levels of serotonin.

EARLY HISTORY OF CHOCOLATE

The earliest record of chocolate was over fifteen hundred years ago in the Central American rain forests, where the tropical mix of high rain fall combined with high year round temperatures and humidity provide the ideal climate for cultivation of the plant from which chocolate is derived, the Cacao Tree.

The Cacao Tree was worshiped by the Mayan civilization of Central America and Southern Mexico, who believed it to be of divine origin, Cacao is actually a Mayan word meaning "God Food" hence the tree's modern generic Latin name 'Theobrama Cacao' meaning ‘Food of the Gods’. Cacao was corrupted into the more familiar 'Cocoa' by the early European explorers. The Maya brewed a spicy, bitter sweet drink by roasting and pounding the seeds of the Cacao tree (cocoa beans) with maize and Capsicum (Chilli) peppers and letting the mixture ferment. This drink was reserved for use in ceremonies as well as for drinking by the wealthy and religious elite, they also ate a Cacao porridge.

The Aztecs of central Mexico also prized the beans, but because the Aztec's lived further north in more arid regions at higher altitudes, where the climate was not suitable for cultivation of the tree, they had to acquire the beans through trade and/or the spoils of war. The Aztecs prized the beans so highly they used them as currency - 100 beans bought a Turkey or a slave - and tribute or Taxes were paid in cocoa beans to Aztec emperors. The Aztecs, like the Mayans, also enjoyed Cacao as a beverage fermented from the raw beans, which again featured prominently in ritual and as a luxury available only to the very wealthy. The Aztecs called this drink Xocolatl, the Spanish conquistadors found this almost impossible to pronounce and so corrupted it to the easier 'Chocolat', the English further changed this to Chocolate.

The Aztec's regarded chocolate as an aphrodisiac and their Emperor, Montezuma reputedly drank it fifty times a day from a golden goblet and is quoted as saying of Xocolatl: "The divine drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food"

In fact, the Aztec's prized Xocolatl well above Gold and Silver so much so, that when Montezuma was defeated by Cortez in 1519 and the victorious 'conquistadors' searched his palace for the Aztec treasury expecting to find Gold & Silver, all they found were huge quantities of cocoa beans. The Aztec Treasury consisted, not of precious metals, but Cocoa Beans.

CHOCOLATE IN EUROPE

Xocolatl! or Chocolat or Chocolate as it became known, was brought to Europe by Cortez, by this time the conquistadors had learned to make the drink more palatable to European tastes by mixing the ground roasted beans with sugar and vanilla (a practice still continued today), thus offsetting the spicy bitterness of the brew the Aztec's drank.

The first chocolate factories opened in Spain, where the dried fermented beans brought back from the new world by the Spanish treasure fleets were roasted and ground, and by the early 17th century chocolate powder - from which the European version of the drink was made - was being exported to other parts of Europe. The Spanish kept the source of the drink - the beans - a secret for many years, so successfully in fact, that when English buccaneers boarded what they thought was a Spanish 'Treasure Galleon' in 1579, only to find it loaded with what appeared to be 'dried sheep's droppings', they burned the whole ship in frustration. If only they had known, chocolate was so expensive at that time, that it was worth it's weight in Silver (if not Gold), Chocolate was Treasure Indeed!

Within a few years, the Cocoa beverage made from the powder produced in Spain had become popular throughout Europe, in the Spanish Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany and - in about 1520 - it arrived in England.

The first Chocolate House in England opened in London in 1657 followed rapidly by many others. Like the already well established coffee houses, they were used as clubs where the wealthy and business community met to smoke a clay pipe of tobacco, conduct business and socialise over a cup of chocolate.