Skinny said:Franco said:Could cocoa be good for you?
The saturated fat contents of cocoa is mainly stearic acid (18:0) and
palmitic acid (16:0). Unlike most saturated fats, these may not be
too bad for your cholesterol.
Do people know of studies investigating specifically the effect of
these fatty acids on LDL and HDL?
Some information is at
http://www.chocolateinfo.com/sr/sr_article_11.jsp
Does anyone know how reliable this information is? Research which
says something as seductive as "chocolate is good for you" runs the
risk of being trumped up and exagerated. Research leading to the
opposite conclusion might not recieve due attention.
Is there someone out there who understands the science well enough to
give a balanced view?
I don't, but here's a balanced view anyway. 🙂
On the one hand, as you say, anything seductive is more likely to be
publicized. Also, the chocolate manufacturers have very deep pockets
to fund research looking for any possible claim of health benefits.
On the third hand 🙂, chocoate is profitable because we crave it, and
we might just have evolved TO crave it BECAUSE it is healthy (in some
special way).
Same for wine etc etc.
My bottom line is, if there is a halfway viable claim for a health
benefit from chocolate etc, we won't have to figure it out for
ourselves, the chocolate people will broadcast it from the rooftops.
🙂 However we may as well get a head start by eating it now.
You might try alt.support.diabetes and alt.support.diet.low-carb as
well (tho not as cross-post please). Plenty of nuts there, get a
killfile, but a lot of good talk too.
Please, look at this study. Emphasizes mine.
Lee KW, Kim YJ, Lee HJ, Lee CY. Cocoa has more phenolic phytochemicals
and a higher antioxidant capacity than teas and red wine. J Agric Food
Chem. 2003 Dec 3;51(25):7292-5.
Black tea, green tea, red wine, and cocoa are high in phenolic
phytochemicals, among which theaflavin, epigallocatechin gallate,
resveratrol, and procyanidin, respectively, have been extensively
investigated due to their possible role as chemopreventive agents based
on their antioxidant capacities. The present study compared the phenolic
and flavonoid contents and total antioxidant capacities of cocoa, black
tea, green tea, and red wine. Cocoa contained much higher levels of
total phenolics (611 mg of gallic acid equivalents, GAE) and flavonoids
(564 mg of epicatechin equivalents, ECE) per serving than black tea (124
mg of GAE and 34 mg of ECE, respectively), green tea (165 mg of GAE and
47 mg of ECE), and red wine (340 mg of GAE and 163 mg of ECE). Total
antioxidant activities were measured using the
2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) and
2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assays and are
expressed as vitamin C equivalent antioxidant capacities (VCEACs). Cocoa
exhibited the highest antioxidant activity among the samples in ABTS and
DPPH assays, with VCEACs of 1128 and 836 mg/serving, respectively. The
relative total antioxidant capacities of the samples in both assays were
as follows in decreasing order: *cocoa* > red wine > green tea > black
tea. The total antioxidant capacities from ABTS and DPPH assays were
highly correlated with phenolic content (r2 = 0.981 and 0.967,
respectively) and flavonoid content (r2 = 0.949 and 0.915). These
results suggest that cocoa is more beneficial to health than teas and
red wine in terms of its higher antioxidant capacity. PMID: 14640573
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14640573
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Juhana
