OK, so it may not be kosher for me to report on a chocolate study that was conducted by an employee of a chocolate maker at the chocolate maker’s own research lab. Get over it. The results of this new study are intriguing and shed more light on the biochemical basis behind dark chocolate’s health benefits.
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.
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.
Though the product used in the study, Nestlé Noir Intense, is not available in the United States, Dr. Kochhar tells me that any dark chocolate with a cocoa content of more than 60% is likely to have the same benefits. We know from other chocolate studies that the darker the chocolate (the higher its cocoa content), the more health benefits it offers.
Though the participants consumed about 220 extra calories a day, they didn’t experience measurable changes in blood-sugar levels. But if you’re thinking about regularly eating this much dark chocolate, better trim 220 calories elsewhere, or you could find yourself 23 pounds heavier a year from now.
Next step in my anti-diabetes program: I take more brain tests
I returned to the Manhattan office of Eric Braverman, MD, on Monday to take a few more brain function tests to determine whether aging has slowed me down in any measurable way. These tests stressed me out—I had to remember lists of words, sets of patterns, faces, sequences, and details of spoken stories and pictures. All told, the tests took an hour or more. Weirdly for a writer who prides herself on her spelling, the one thing I flunked was being able to spell the word world backward.
In spite of that, as it turns out, my brain’s working just fine. I scored average or above average in all the tested categories. According to Richard Smayda, DO, an osteopath who works with Dr. Braverman, I should be able to improve my function to above average in all categories after a few months of following Dr. Braverman’s program, which I’ll outline here next week. I should also be able to lose 15 more pounds and normalize my blood sugar and pressure.
Read more about Dr. Braverman’s program
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Comments (9)
The article sure alowed me to justify what I’m already doing~~~~Thanks.
First of all, that cohort isn’t large enough to be a very valid study.
Second – not all chocolates are alike in terms of content and manufacturing – and all chocolate bars have to be processed.
While the results may be true, or may be true for some chocolates for some individuals, it is this type of way too quick-and-dirty and non-rigorous scientific reporting that does people a great disservice. The type that the nifty new ‘food group’ made up of folks like Kraft and ConAgra would approve.
This message brought to you by:
The American Chocolate Council
“Chocolate is good for life”
Has anyone done a real study on this? It seems like all the ones I read about are more like just-for-fun small group things.
I love it! And I would love to participate in the US study, of course!!
Why not be kosher and cite kosher studies? Perhaps you believe there aren’t any but there are. Here’s some ideas from Life Extension Foundation:
http://search.lef.org/cgi-src-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&page_id=688&query=chocolate&hiword=CHOCOLATES%20chocolate%20
Sara, get over denying there is such a thing as conflict of interest. You’re right, it is way unkosher to report a study on chocolate funded by a chocolate maker, especially Nestle. Thousands get sick and die by trusting bogus research results funded by drugmakers and other vested interests.
It probably is wrong to report on a chocolate study performed by a Nestle lab. But I agree the results are intriguing, if not believable until confirmed by an unbiased lab.
My elderly mother has been squirreling away chocolate for years, despite being told over & over not to eat it for multiple reasons, including high blood pressure, obesity, etc, etc. Since studies have started coming out saying cocoa is healthy but milk chocolate is not, I’ve been contemplating buying her some little dark chocolate bars to “reward” her with at times, such as her brother recommended. I haven’t yet. I am seriously considering baking her some cocoa brownies occasionally however. At least home-baked cocoa brownies could be rationed & would have only beneficial ingredients.
Another thought: perhaps people would benefit from taking small amounts of dark chocolate with them to use in medicinal doses during high-stress times?
Come on people, wake up and smell the chocolate! Get those Hershey Special Dark Chocolate Sugar Free bite size bars!! A serving is considered 5 little bars, but one little bar of delish dark chocolate goes a long way at the end of the day and no guilt!