Nutrition Facts for Cocoa and Chocolate

There have been many studies linking cocoa and dark chocolate with health benefits. Cocoa and chocolate contain a large amount of antioxidants (flavinoids). Cocoa and dark chocolate may keep high blood pressure down and reduce the blood's ability to clot, thus the risk of stroke and heart attacks may be reduced. The darker chocolate with the most concentrated cocoa will be the most beneficial. According to an Italian study, a small square (20 g) of dark (bittersweet) chocolate every three days is the ideal dose for cardiovascular benefits. Eating more does not provide additional benefits.

The nutrition values presented below are based on review of a selection of brands. Variations outside the given ranges can be expected. Numbers are % by weight, not % of daily value.

Nutrition Values for Cocoa and Chocolate

 

Fat

Cocoa beans contain approximately 50% fat. It is primarily comprised of two saturated fatty acids (palmitic and stearic acids) and one mono-unsaturated acid (oleic acid). Cocoa butter and chocolate do not raise blood cholesterol. However, when consuming milk chocolate or lower grade chocolate where a part of the total fat content comes from milk fat or various other types of fat, the cholesterol level might be adversely affected.

Sugar

The cacao bean contains quite a lot of carbohydrates, but most of it is starch, soluble dietary fibers, and insoluble dietary fibers. A very small proportion is simple sugars. Sugar is added during the manufacture of chocolate.

Antioxidants

Cocoa beans contain polyphenols (similar to those found in wine) with antioxidant properties which are health beneficial. These compounds are called flavonoids and include catechins, epicatechins, and procyandins. The antioxidant flavinoids are found in the nonfat portions of the cocoa bean. The flavinoids also reduce the blood's ability to clot and thus reduces the risk of stroke and heart attacks.

Theobromine

Theobromine is a very mild stimulant with a mild diuretic action (increases the production of urine). Theobromine can be toxic to animals like dogs, cats, parrots and horses.

Caffeine

Cocoa beans contains a very low amount of caffeine, much less than found in coffee, tea and cola drinks.

Phenylethylamine

Phenylethylamine is a slight antidepressant and stimulant similar to the body's own dopamine and adrenaline.

Serotonine

Cocoa and chocolate can increase the level of serotonine in the brain. Serotonine levels are often decreased in people with depression and in those experiencing PMS symptoms.

Essential minerals

Cocoa beans are rich in a number of essential minerals, including magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc, copper, potassium and manganese.

Vitamins

A, B1, B2, B3, C, E and pantothenic acid.

Is chocolate fattening?

Yes, chocolate is fattening. Even dark chocolate contains a lot of calories because of the large content of fat and sugar. The sugar content in chocolate is worse than the fat content regarding negative effects on health.

Eat a Fish a Day

While eating whole fish undoubtedly offers the optimum approach for increasing omega-3 intakes in both primary and secondary prevention, supplements have a major role to play in increasing omega-3 intakes for people who do not like fish. Most people, whether healthy or having cardiovascular disease (CVD), would benefit from regular consumption of oily fish.

The symposium " A fish a day keeps the doctor away" centred on the cardiovascular disease (CVD) benefits of the long chain highly unsaturated omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) found in the flesh of oily fish, such as salmon, mackerel, herring, trout and sardines. In the round table debate speakers attempted to unravel the current confusion where initial studies showed eating fish/taking omega 3 supplements delivered CVD benefits, but more recent studies with supplements failed to reproduce these effects.

"Omega-3 fatty acids are really important to human health, whether you're talking about CVD, brain or immune health. Heath professionals have a key role to play in educating the public about the beneficial effects of including fish in their diets," said Philip Calder, a metabolic biochemist and nutritionist from the University of Southampton, UK. The latest European Guidelines on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Clinical Practice, recommend that people should eat fish at least twice a week, one meal of which should be oily fish.

For people opting for supplements, warned Calder, it is best to take pharmaceutical grade preparations of omega-3 oils since not all over the counter preparations contain the same dose of the fatty acids. "It's important that health professionals give clear guidance around the need for patients to take 1g of omega-3 a day to achieve any beneficial effects. With over the counter brands containing different concentrations there's a danger people may not be receiving sufficient intakes," said Calder. Eating oily fish may prove more beneficial than taking capsules of omega-3. "This is because fish contain all sorts of other nutrients like vitamin D, selenium and iodine that may also be beneficial against CVD. And we don't have the final proof that the benefits from eating fish come from the omega-3," said Daan Kromhout, from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. "Fish, it needs to be remembered, don't provide a total panacea against CVD. As well as consuming fish, people need to eat healthy diets, not smoke and be physically active."

Following the first epidemiological observations in Greenland Inuits, prospective cohort studies carried out in European, American, Japanese, and Chinese populations also showed inverse associations between fish consumption and CVD morbidity and mortality.

Recently a Danish cohort study from Aalborg found that when levels of omega-3 fatty acids were measured in an adipose biopsy taken from the buttocks of 57 053 subjects, a negative dose response was found with the risk of acute MI.

The only real way to look for benefits in primary prevention is to investigate the effects on intermediate endpoints. One such study by Matthew Pase, from the NICM Centre for Study of Natural Medicines and Neurocognition, Melbourne, Australia, reviewing data from 10 clinical trials involving 550 participants, found omega-3 fatty acids reduced pulse wave velocity by an average of 33 % and arterial compliance by 48 %.

Omega-3 fatty acids can exert a variety of actions on cell physiology and function. They're anti-inflammatory and might therefore decrease the inflammatory processes within the vessel wall, which are recognised as major contributors to atherosclerosis.

Omega-3 fatty acids are also known to have an anti-arrhythmic effect. The presence of omega-3 fatty acids in cardiomyocyte membrane phospholipids decreases electrical excitability and modulates the activity of ion channels (e.g. sodium, potassium and calcium, effects that are claimed to promote electrical stability in the cell and prevent arrhythmias. It is also known that omega-3 fatty acids are potent triglyceride lowering agents. One issue that has hindered studies exploring the mechanisms of action of omega-3 is that the amounts of EPA and DHA vary between the different commercial preparations of omega-3.

When You Eat matters, Not Just What You Eat

When it comes to weight gain, when you eat might be at least as important as what you eat. That's the conclusion of a study reported in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism published early online on May 17th.

When mice on a high-fat diet are restricted to eating for eight hours per day, they eat just as much as those who can eat around the clock, yet they are protected against obesity and other metabolic ills, the new study shows. The discovery suggests that the health consequences of a poor diet might result in part from a mismatch between our body clocks and our eating schedules.

"Every organ has a clock," said lead author of the study Satchidananda Panda of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. That means there are times that our livers, intestines, muscles, and other organs will work at peak efficiency and other times when they are—more or less—sleeping.

Those metabolic cycles are critical for processes from cholesterol breakdown to glucose production, and they should be primed to turn on when we eat and back off when we don't, or vice versa. When mice or people eat frequently throughout the day and night, it can throw off those normal metabolic cycles.

"When we eat randomly, those genes aren't on completely or off completely," Panda said. The principle is just like it is with sleep and waking, he explained. If we don't sleep well at night, we aren't completely awake during the day, and we work less efficiently as a consequence.

To find out whether restricted feeding alone—without a change in calorie intake—could prevent metabolic disease, Panda's team fed mice either a standard or high-fat diet with one of two types of food access: ad lib feeding or restricted access.

The time-restricted mice on a high-fat diet were protected from the adverse effects of a high-fat diet and showed improvements in their metabolic and physiological rhythms. They gained less weight and suffered less liver damage. The mice also had lower levels of inflammation, among other benefits.

Panda says there is reason to think our eating patterns have changed in recent years, as many people have greater access to food and reasons to stay up into the night, even if just to watch TV. And when people are awake, they tend to snack.

The findings suggest that restricted meal times might be an underappreciated lifestyle change to help people keep off the pounds. At the very least, the new evidence suggests that this is a factor in the obesity epidemic that should be given more careful consideration.

"The focus has been on what people eat," Panda said. "We don't collect data on when people eat."