I mix unsweetened cocoa with unsweetened apple sauce.
George
Chocolate Linked to Lower Blood Pressure
By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
3 hours agoUPDATED 2 HOURS 17 MINUTES AGO
CHICAGO - Leave it to the Dutch to help demonstrate the health benefits of
chocolate. A study of older men in The Netherlands, known for its luscious
chocolate, indicated those who ate the equivalent of one-third of a
chocolate bar every day had lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of
death.
The researchers say, however, it's too early to conclude it was chocolate
that led to better health. The men who ate more cocoa products could have
shared other qualities that made them healthier. Experts also point out that
eating too much chocolate can make you fat _ a risk for both heart disease
and high blood pressure.
"It's way too early to make recommendations about whether people should eat
more cocoa or chocolate," said Brian Buijsse, a nutritional epidemiologist
at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, who co-authored the study.
Still, the Dutch study, supported by grants from the Netherlands Prevention
Foundation, appears to be the largest so far to document a health effect for
cocoa beans. And it confirms findings of smaller, shorter-term studies that
also linked chocolate with lower blood pressure.
The findings, published in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, are based
on data collected for more than a decade on Dutch men who were ages 65 and
older in 1985. The long-running Zutphen Elderly Study has been used by other
researchers to look for risk factors for chronic disease.
This time, researchers examined the eating habits of 470 healthy men who
were not taking blood pressure medicine. The men who ate the most products
made from cocoa beans _ including cocoa drinks, chocolate bars and chocolate
pudding _ had lower blood pressure and a 50 percent lower risk of death.
Cocoa beans contain flavanols, which are thought to increase nitric oxide in
the blood and improve the function of blood vessels.
"This is a very important article providing epidemiological support for what
many researchers have been observing in experimental models," said Cesar
Fraga of the University of California Davis, who does similar research but
was not involved in the new study.
Buijsse noted the men eating the most cocoa products were not heavier or
bigger eaters than the men who ate less cocoa.
Could the study results apply to women?
"Our study consisted of elderly men," Buijsse said. "If you look at the
other interventional studies, you see the same effects in men and women,
younger people and older people. It may be the findings are generalizable to
women, but you never know."
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