Dark Chocolate's Five Fabulous Benefits!

Dark Chocolate features many benefits that contribute to your well- being...

From DoctorSolve.com is the wonderful run-down containing five wonderful benefits that dark chocolate has to offer! Here's an excerpt:

"...You've probably already heard of chocolate improving the mood, but there are more health benefits to chocolate that you may be unaware of. Before you go raiding the candy jar, keep in mind that these health benefits pertain to DARK CHOCOLATE only. That is anything with a cocoa content over 65%. Milk chocolate is probably what you are used to, but if you are interested in eating healthy it might be a good idea to give dark chocolate a try.

1. Good for the Heart - Due to the presence of antioxidants in dark chocolate, studies have found that in individuals with high blood pressure, a stick of dark chocolate a day can lower blood pressure levels. In addition, dark chocolate has been known to lower cholesterol levels by up to 10%.

2. Improves Mood - Dark chocolate stimulates endorphin production which in turn provides the brain with feelings of pleasure. A substance called theobromine which provides you with caffeine-like stimulation is also present in dark chocolate. Dark chocolate contains serotonin which is known to act as an anti-depressant."

Read the rest of the list here! Delicious.

Dark Chocolate Helps to Lower Stress!

Organic, delicous dark chocolate soothes stress...

From Sarah Altshul on Health.com is this relieving article about how adding dark chocolate to your diet may help to relieve stress. Here's more:

"...The team of researchers was led by Sunil Kochhar, PhD, who heads the BioAnalytical Science Department at the Nestlé Research Center in Switzerland. He and his colleagues designed the study to see whether eating dark chocolate every day for two weeks could affect the way the body metabolizes stress hormones.

They recruited 30 healthy young people—11 men and 19 women. They tested their anxiety levels and determined that 13 of them tested as “high anxiety” and 17 tested as “low anxiety” on standardized anxiety tests. They gave the volunteers 40 grams of dark chocolate (about an ounce and a half), containing 74% cocoa, every day for two weeks and tested their blood and urine at the beginning and end of the trial.

Photo from ChistineAvanti.com

In the high anxiety group, eating chocolate reduced levels of their stress hormones, and the changes were “biologically significant,” Dr. Kochhar tells me. What’s more, people felt less anxious after munching on chocolate. The findings did not apply to the low anxiety group. “We observed improvement in the anxiety states of subjects immediately after their consumption of chocolate,” he says."

Read the rest of this article here.

More Nutritous Benefits of Dark Chocolate!! Pour the Chocolate Milk...

More reasons to love your chocolate - chocolate milk helps reduce inflammation!

In this fantastic article by Roni Caryn Rabin, we gain insight as to how consuming a wholesome glass of chocolate milk can be greatly beneficial! Here's more from the article:

"...Move over, red wine. Make room for chocolate milk. A new study suggests that regular consumption of skim milk with flavonoid-rich cocoa may reduce inflammation, potentially slowing or preventing development of atherosclerosis . Researchers noted, however, that the effect was not as pronounced as that seen with red wine.

Scientists in Barcelona, Spain, recruited 47 volunteers ages 55 and older who were at risk for heart disease. Half were given 20-gram sachets of soluble cocoa powder to drink with skim milk twice a day, while the rest drank plain skim milk. After one month, the groups were switched.

Blood tests found that after participants drank chocolate milk twice a day for four weeks, they had significantly lower levels of several inflammatory biomarkers, though some markers of cellular inflammation remained unchanged.

Since atherosclerosis is a low-grade inflammatory disease of the arteries, regular cocoa intake seems to prevent or reduce” it, said Dr. Ramón Estruch of the University of Barcelona, the paper’s senior author, adding that more studies were needed."

Read the rest of the good news here at NYTimes.com.

Love the Taste of Dark Chocolate? The Science of Taste & Smell..

Dark, gourmet chocolate is indeed a beloved to our taste buds...but do you know why?

From Science Daily is this article about the science of taste and smell! Truly fascinating - here's more from the article on ScienceDaily.com:

"...Most people don't realize that most of what we call taste -- enjoying a meal or a fine wine -- is actually smell," Karen Kalumuck, a biologist at San Francisco's Exploratorium, tells DBIS.

Kalumuck says 75 percent of what we call taste is due to what we smell. "Think about when you've a cold. You've got this stuffed up nose. I mean, what did things taste like? Not so great," she tells DBIS. "That's really because we can't have the odorant molecules meet up with the sensory receptors in the nose and transmit that information to the brain."

You can see how the nose and the mouth work together if you pinch your nose and eat a piece of candy, then unplug your nose while it's still in your mouth.

The nose has 5 million odor receptors that can detect 10,000 unique odors. On the tongue, there are taste buds. Inside each bud could be 50 to 100 taste receptor cells. Each receptor cell detects one of five different types of taste, sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami.

What's umami? It detects the amino acid glutamate and was added to the list in 2000.

"Most ... have probably experienced glutamate in the form of MSG," Kalumuck says.

Also, spicy foods are not part of our taste or smell receptors ... They stimulate our pain receptors. So people who love spicy have a high tolerance for pain! And taste is all genetic! Your genes determine the type and number of sensors you have, so you can blame mom or dad if you don't like your food.

Kalumuck says you can learn to enjoy foods that might -- at first bite -- taste unpleasant."

Read the rest of this interesting article here.