Sweet relief: Guilty pleasure could have health benefits

Studies of chocolate's naturally high flavanol content are revealing some intriguing findings about the advantage of this much-loved confection.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Dec. 6, 2004.

Chocolate is more than a food -- it's often a way straight to someone's heart. That's why great quantities of this most delectable candy will be given as gifts this holiday season and throughout the year.

But could this velvety concoction also have a second heartfelt value -- playing a role in a heart-healthy diet? That's a question now gaining currency.

Of course, this is not the first time such an idea has been considered a possibility.

Even in the ancient Americas, the products of the Theobroma cacao tree were thought to possess amazing health properties. Its flowers and beans were valued as aphrodisiacs and treatments for indigestion, kidney disease, exhaustion, wasting or thinness, hypochondria and hemorrhoids by the Olmec, Maya and Aztec peoples of South and Central America. Many of these uses spread to Europe.

But chocolate's star as a health food dimmed over the centuries, and it eventually assumed its current place as a guilty indulgence -- as well it should. For, alas, there is little health benefit that can be attributed to the typical chocolate bar snatched up while waiting in the checkout line of your neighborhood supermarket or the tidbit carefully selected from among its companions nestled in a large heart-shaped box.

New studies, however, are again associating this sweet treat with some surprisingly medicinal attributes.

"Since remote antiquity, there has been a dual aspect to chocolate: chocolate as food; chocolate as medicine," notes Louis E. Grivetti, PhD, professor of nutrition at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Grivetti has studied chocolate's role in history.