Hobbies And Interests
Background
Dark chocolate has more flavonoids than milk or white chocolate, which essentially has no flavonoids because of its comparatively high cocoa content, and because it has not been highly processed by adding milk and lots of sugar.
Chocolate producers make chocolate by crushing roasted, fermented cocoa beans into a liquid called chocolate liquor, which also contains liquefied cocoa butter, the natural fat of cocoa. After processing, this liquid becomes cocoa powder, a solid product minus the cocoa butter. Add sugar and more cocoa butter to the chocolate liquor and dark chocolate results.
Breast Cancer Cells
Researchers at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University reported that when they treated human breast cancer cells in the lab with pentamer, a potent flavonoid found in cocoa, the breast cancer cells stopped dividing. Pentamer stopped the cancer activity of four proteins identified by the experimenters. More studies will either confirm or shoot down this finding, but the lead researcher Robert B. Dickson said the results of the experiment were inconclusive as to whether "a master switch" that triggers cell growth is deactivated by the pentamer or whether the dark chocolate compound causes a number of effects on different cell mechanisms. The MARS company, a maker of chocolate candy, sponsored the study that was published in 2005.
Dark Chocolate vs. Red Wine
Researchers studying the comparative flavonoids in red wine and chocolate published the results of their study in 2010 in the journal "Food Chemistry." The compared the flavonoids in red wine with those in four types of chocolate: dark containing 40 percent cocoa (D40), dark containing 71 percent cocoa (D71), milk chocolate and white chocolate. The scientists ground up 0.26 ounces of chocolate for each sample, dissolved it in 6.76 ounces of distilled water at 212 degrees Farenheit and mixed the solution until the fat melted. Then the scientists put the sample in a refrigerated centrifuge to remove the cocoa butter.
The analysis found that the D71 chocolate had the most flavonoids of any of the chocolates. If a 154-pound adult eats 1.73 ounces of dark chocolate daily he gets the same equivalent benefits that he would if he drank 6.6 ounces of Tannat wine daily, which is the recommended daily intake to benefit from flavonoids, say the researchers.
Memory in Mice
Scientists at the Salk Institute gave mice epicatechin, a flavonid found in dark chocolate. After putting all the mice in the study through exercises, the mice fed dark chocolate perrformed better in memory tests than the control group.