Thread: If You Love to Eat Chocolate, Read This!

Just in time for Valentine's Day gift giving comes word from the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. that chocolate will help your heart to keep working longer and stronger. You read that right: Eat chocolate. Live longer. It doesn't get any better than that.

The magic ingredient is flavonoids, which are chemicals that help improve circulation, cut blood pressure, and may provide other health benefits, reports The Associated Press. Flavonoids are protective antioxidants that are also found in green tea and red wine. The hardworking members of the National Academy of Sciences spent all day on Tuesday locked up in some Washington, D.C. conference room tasting a variety of drinking cocoas and learning about the history, cultural impact, and medical benefits of cocoa, which is the plant that produces the raw material for chocolate.


The ancient Aztecs sang these words: "I drink chocolate, it makes me happy, my heart rejoices." This may not be a metaphor. Dr. Helmut Sies, chairman of the department of biochemistry at the University of Duesseldorf, Germany, told AP that over the past 10 years scientists have come to see a definitive relationship between consuming more flavonoids and lowering the death rate from heart disease. Cocoa can also be used to lower blood pressure, according to Dr. Norman K. Hollenberg of Harvard Medical School. The trick is finding chocolate that retains cocoa's flavonoids, since cocoa processing often reduces the level of these heart-healthy chemicals.


And as with anything that seems too good to be true: Eat chocolate in moderation since it is high in fats and sugar.