How Chocolate can Help Prevent Obesity
We all love chocolate for its delicious taste, but how many of us actually know that chocolate turns out to also have outstanding health benefits? Statistically speaking, more than 30% of the adults from the United States of America suffer from obesity, and this is a growing concern that affects the entire world, not just the US.
A recent study has revealed that a key compound present in chocolate reduces both the risk for obesity and for type two diabetes, which are two of the most common and most dangerous diseases of the 21st century. In addition to this, consuming moderate amounts of chocolate on a regular basis also prevents high blood pressure and decreased appetite, and it improves your cognitive capacity as well. Here you will find all the details of the study.
This beneficial compound is found in the cocoa, one of the ingredients that has the highest amounts of flavanol – and also the main ingredient found in chocolate and dark chocolate. It is precisely the flavanol that significantly reduces the risk for weight gain in the long run, and this valuable ingredients can be found in tea, grapes and several other foods that are great when you are trying to lose some weight. Not only do flavanols help you prevent obesity and diabetes, but it also acts as an antioxidant, which means that it protects your body cells against the damaging effects of the free radicals and slows down the cell oxidation at the same time.
The study was conducted on several laboratory mice that were feed different diets and who received different amounts of flavanol. It turned out that adding one type of flavanol (oligomeric procyanidins) has helped the mice lose some weight, due to its anti-diabetic and anti-obesity problems.
This mice study was conducted by the researcher Andrew P. Neilson, but throughout the years there were numerous other studies that have concluded the exact same thing: eating small amounts of chocolate can and will prevent weight gain and hypertension. The study lasted for three months, during which the laboratory mice were fed several different diets (both low and high-fat), in order to record their reactions to each one. Also, the diets contained three different types of flavanols as well, the monomeric, oligomeric and polymeric procyandins, and it turned out that the latter were the most efficient for maintaining the body weight of mice, as well as for improving their glucose tolerance, which led the researchers to believe that it can also prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes in the long run.
Another earlier study has not only revealed the health benefits of chocolate against type 2 diabetes and obesity, but also those of wine and berries. Nonetheless, the effects do vary depending on the type of chocolate as well as the amount that is consumed, but in the end everything comes down to the precious antioxidants known as flavanols.
Although the results of the mice study are more than encouraging for the scientists and researchers, more studies are required in order to thoroughly analyze the effects of flavanol feeding and which type has the highest bioactivity. This is a vital step prior to moving on to human clinical applications and seeing whether cocoa (and chocolate, automatically) has the same effects on people.
One must eat around 70 grams of dark chocolate on a daily basis in order to enjoy from all the health benefits mentioned above, and in addition to preventing obesity and weight gain, chocolate is also believed to reduce the risk of atherosclerosis, which is basically the hardening and the thickening of the arteries. In other words, moderate consumption of dark chocolate can have a positive impact on vascular health as well.
