Dark Chocolates Benefits

Dark chocolate is good for pregnant women: study

Apr 28, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A daily snack of quality dark chocolate is healthy for pregnant women and protects them from possible high blood pressure problems, a medical study said Monday.

By biting into rich, dark chocolate, there is a 69 percent less chance of contracting preeclampsia, a major pregnancy complication with cardiovascular manifestations such as hypertension that affects up to eight percent of pregnancies, said Dr. Elizabeth Triche.

The associate director at the Yale Center for Perinatal, Pediatric & Environmental Epidemiology, at Yale University, co-authored the 1996-2000 study of 2,291 women published in the May issue of Epidemiology.

The study method measured the density of theobromine -- a chemical in chocolate -- in the arterial cord blood extracted from the umbilical cord at delivery.

The primary effects of theobromine include diuresis, myocardial stimulation and vasodilatation. Other chemicals in chocolate include magnesium, which lowers hypertension, and flavanoids, which are potent antioxidants, the study said.

"Quantifying self-reported chocolate and cocoa consumption is extremely difficult due to considerable variation in the cocoa content of chocolate products," Triche said.

"The darker (the chocolate) is, the better it is. The more highly processed, the more fat and sweet it is, the less it contains theobromine," she said, adding that theobromine concentrations in chocolate vary from 0.15 percent to 0.46 percent.

"In this prospective cohort of pregnant women, we observed that chocolate consumption, as measured by cord serum levels of the biomarker theobromine, was associated with lower risk of preeclampsia," the study concluded.

"It's like eating a good quality chocolate bar every day," said Triche.

Dark Chocolate Boosts Antioxidant Levels

18:45 27 August 03
NewScientist.com news service

      Eating chocolate can boost the level of heart-protecting antioxidants in the blood, but consuming milk at the same time cancels the potential health benefits, according to a new study.

    The researchers speculate that milk may also have the same effect on other
antioxidant-rich foods, including fruit and green vegetables.

     Researchers in Scotland and Italy looked at the body's absorption of an antioxidant found in cocoa, called epicatechin, and a type of flavonoid.

     Dark chocolate contains about twice the amount of flavonoids as milk chocolate, so 12 healthy volunteers were given either 100 grams of plain chocolate or 200 grams of milk chocolate. Some were also given 200 ml of milk to drink in the double-blind experiment. The levels of antioxidant in their blood plasma were tested after one, two and four hours.