Chocolate: Anti Aging Brain Memory Heart Health Benefit

For chocolate lovers, chocolate is a richly satisfying and smoothly decadent delight of euphoric experience. For anti-aging health enthusiasts and baby boomers in search of foods that slow the aging process and prevent age-related diseases, chocolate is proving to be a potential Fountain of Youth in health benefit.

What makes chocolate a healthy treat? In a word, flavonoids. The same antioxidant flavonoids found in flavonoid-rich berries, fruits, vegetables, grapes, red wine and tea. Flavonoids are chemical compounds that gives blueberries their deep blue pigment of color, grapes their deep purple pigment of color, broccoli its deep green pigment color. Antioxidants are the chemical compounds that reduce oxidative cell damage caused by free radicals. The damage from free radicals can lead to aging, heart disease, and cancers.

There are thousands of identified antioxidant flavonoids. Currently, the one of interest to researchers studying the properties of chocolate is the high amounts of the flavonoid epicatechin found in cocoa. It is the cocoa with which chocolate is produced that might elevate chocolate to the status of an anti-aging health food for both heart health and brain memory.

Salk Institute researchers have found initial evidence that dark chocolate improves blood flow in the brain and might lead to improved memory as a result. Brain function and memory will become an increasingly important issue as the baby boomer generation continues to age.

Past research has shown dark chocolate provides heart health benefits. Additional research results have shown cocoa provided three times as much antioxidant flavonoid epicatechin as green tea and two times as much antioxidant flavonoid epicatechin as red wine.

All chocolate is not the same. Researchers discovered milk chocolate does not appear to offer the same health benefits as dark chocolate. Not only that, but drinking milk while eating dark chocolate negates the health benefit dark chocolate might otherwise provide. Because the main ingredient in chocolate is cocoa, the more cocoa the darker the chocolate. The darker the chocolate the better in terms of potential health benefit.

All chocolate on the market is not the same. Candy makers like Mars, savvy to consumer interest and market trends, have sponsored research into the health benefits of chocolate and formulated products enhanced with antioxidant flavonoids.

The good health news for chocolate aficionados and anti-aging health enthusiasts is wrapped in a bit of common sense caution. Cocoa is not fattening but chocolate can be fattening, and while small amounts of chocolate indulgence might be a very good thing, too much of a good thing will diminish any of the health benefit of chocolate.

Sources: Wikipedia Flavonoids; Nutrition Data; Mars CocoaVia Fact Sheet; Flavonols and exercise enhance memory;Don't Mess With Our Chocolate