Scientists say eating dark chocolate could help to ward off Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease
It is the seemingly welcome Easter message for chocolate lovers that could become a bitter pill.
Scientists say eating dark chocolate could help to ward off Alzheimer’s and heart disease but it needs to have such intensity that a tablet is being developed for those who cannot stomach the sharp taste.
Roger Corder, professor of experimental therapeutics at Queen Mary University of London, said flavanols, bioactive compounds in dark chocolate, should be taken from middle age to prevent stiffening of the blood vessels that can lead to heart disease and Alzheimer’s.
However, only dark chocolate made from about 85 per cent cocoa mass contains sufficient flavanols to bring the health benefit. Most people prefer less intense confectionery that has been mellowed by the addition of fat.
To tackle the problem, scientists are developing “chocolate pills” from cocoa extracts. Last week the European Commission (EC) gave permission to the Belgian confectioner, Barry Callebaut, to claim that in supplements made from cocoa extracts “cocoa flavanols help maintain the elasticity of blood vessels, which contributes to normal blood flow”. Barry Callebaut said: “It will become easy for consumers to take the required daily amount of cocoa flavanols through one simple pill.”
Mars is now running a five-year trial with the National Institutes of Health in America to test the ability of cocoa flavanols to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke and death from cardiovascular disease. Corder said: “If we are moving it towards a pharmaceutic product where the flavours are masked, having it in a tablet or capsule formulation, then it has a potential use across a wide spectrum of people.”
In 2013, the EC granted Barry Callebaut permission to claim “cocoa flavanols help maintain the elasticity of blood vessels, which contributes to normal blood flow” on its dark chocolate bar Acticoa.
The claim can be used on chocolate that contains 200mg of cocoa flavanols per 20g of chocolate. Commercial chocolate products tend, however, to contain less than this.
Someone trying to consume 200mg of flavanols would need to eat about 65g of an average chocolate per day. That would be 350 calories, an amount hard to accommodate in a healthy diet.
Corder says dark chocolate made with 85 per cent-90 per cent of cocoa mass is more likely to reach the required level of flavanols than the average dark chocolate bar. However, many brands that advertise as “85 per cent cocoa” or “85 per cent cocoa solids” include cocoa butter in the percentage. It makes chocolate taste smoother and less bitter but dilutes the flavanol content.
Corder’s tests found the only chocolate bar, apart from Acticoa, that came close to having enough flavanols to support the EC-approved health claim, was Hotel Chocolat’s 100 per cent cocoa Hacienda Iara, Ecuador, with 180mg of flavanols per 20g of chocolate.
Reproduced from the Australian 5/4/15
