WHAT YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT CHOCOLATE
Let’s consider CHOCOLATE, that old stand-by on Valentine’s Day, which is right around the corner.
It is thought that the first people to discover chocolate were Mayans around 250-900 A.D. Chocolate is derived from cocoa beans that are enclosed in a pod of the cocoa tree, which originated in Mexican rainforests. Originally, the Mayans and Aztecs used cocoa for a highly valued drink and the cocoa beans were even used as money. The chocolate which we enjoy today has come long way over the years.
What’s in Chocolate?
Nutritionists have recently changed their tune on chocolate that was once considered an enemy. Actually, it turns out that indulging yourself in this goodly food may do you a favour.
A dark chocolate bar typically contains cocoa solids, cocoa butter and sugar. Chocolate by definition must contain the two components from cocoa beans: coca (sometimes listed as cocoa liquor or cacao), and cocoa butter (separated in the processing of the beans). Many cheap chocolate products have substitutes for the cocoa butter as it is expensive and is rather sold for cosmetic purposes. Small amount of cocoa in low quality products is usually compensated for by artificial substitutes and flavours. White chocolate is not an adequate name, because it does not contain cocoa, just cocoa butter, with milk powder and sugar added.
Fats. Cocoa butter comprises oleic acid, the same that is in olive oil and is good for you. Oleic acid raises your good, HDL cholesterol and lowers your bad, LDL cholesterol level.
Of the saturated fat, more than half is composed of stearic acid, a fatty acid that is converted by the liver to oleic acid. About 25% of chocolate fat is palmitic acid, which is not so good. However, the high levels of good fat seem to counteract the potential negative effect of the bad fat.
Besides fat, a chocolate bar contains nutrients that make it look like real food. Among others are: proteins, fibers, iron, copper, zinc, phosphorus and magnesium. The magnesium is particularly important: 115mg per 100g of chocolate. It regulates our blood pressure, and thus protects us from a heart disease, also augments chocolate antioxidants to do the same. Magnesium also improves the way carbohydrates are metabolized, and that is the sugar from chocolate. The sugar is the ingredient we need to watch out for. Higher quality dark chocolate sugar content is insignificant. A 50g 70% cocoa chocolate bar contains about 15 g of sugar, which is just 5% of the daily recommended intake of carbohydrates. Of course, here we have to watch the amount of chocolate we eat on a daily basis. If you look at the list of ingredients of a milk chocolate, you’ll see that the cocoa content comes in the third, sometimes fourth place (after sugar, milk and cocoa butter). You’re getting much more sugar and milk than cocoa, which explains why dark chocolate has a much better reputation.
Many chocolate products contain lecithin. It is used as an emulsifier, to give chocolate a satiny, rich feel. It is a lipid used to build membranes of every cell in our body and many people buy it as a nutritional supplement. It is particularly needed by our brain and cardiovascular system. However, it is a soy product, which means an allergen. Therefore, many people look for chocolate without it. Organic ☺chocolate, which also uses organic lecithin, is safer as we know that most conventional soy in North America is genetically modified. This is not true for Europe, where we get a lot of imported chocolate products from. In cheap chocolates there is a lot of lecithin, which substitutes for cocoa butter, and it gives the product an inferior taste.
A very dark chocolate, with a high percentage of cocoa, is also a powerful medicine. It is packed with antioxidants, although not really fun to eat. The FDA classification for chocolate regulates the cocoa content as follows:
Milk Chocolate 10%
Sweet Chocolate 15%
Semisweet Chocolate 15%
Bittersweet Chocolate 35%.
With the discovery of the benefits of cocoa, it has become a tendency towards stronger and stronger chocolate on this continent.
Antioxidants
Cocoa is a top antioxidant food. Among the most noteworthy antioxidants are polyphenols, also found in red wine and green tea. They taste bitter and astringent on your tongue. 100g of dark chocolate has 13,120 ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) units, as opposed to 2,400 in 100g of blueberries. It has twice the antioxidant content of a glass of red wine and 7 times that of green tea.
Antioxidants prevent a wide range of diseases from arthritis to cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. They combat free radicals in our body, i.e. the molecules gone bad. The polyphenol antioxidants in chocolate are molecules composed of a ring of 6 carbon atoms. Some bonds between those atoms are double, but one single is enough, so polyphenols can shuffle their bonds to latch onto free radicals and they carry them out of the body with them when they are excreted. Chocolate is a great supply of polyphenols to continuously eliminate free radicals from our body.
Healthy Aspects of Chocolate
Chocolate can reduce symptoms of asthma and allergies. Proanthocyanidins in chocolate act as antihistamines.
Theobromine proved to be 6 times more efficient as a cough suppressant than codeine.
Chocolate may prevent cavities in teeth. The tannins in it prevent bacteria from being able to form the plaque.
The cocoa flavanols have been shown to be able to limit the progression of cardiovascular diseases by exerting anti-blood clotting, anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant activity. At normal consumption levels, flavanol rich chocolate has a similar effect to that associated with taking a low dose of baby aspirin. Due to the effects of flavanols in chocolate on nitric oxide in blood vessels, chocolate helps regulating our blood pressure.
Feel-Good Food
We often turn to chocolate as a mood enhancer, and here’s why: Chocolate is a brew of 400 natural chemicals. The following are most responsible for the effect of chocolate on our brain: caffeine, theobromine, serotonin, tryptamine, phenyl ethylamine and anandamine.
Although low doses of caffeine are a great temporary tonic, high regular doses are addictive, because of the neural activity that takes place after it trickles out of your brain. For comparison, 12 oz of coffee contain 200mg of caffeine, versus 27 mg in 1.5 oz of dark and 11mg in milk chocolate. 12 oz of Coca Cola or Pepsi have 50mg; the same amount of black tea has 140mg. An average American consumes 300mg of the drug a day.
Theobromine, like caffeine, is a stimulant, but 10 times milder. It isn’t found in a wide range of foods, coca being the primary source of it in North American diet. The chemical was named after the cacao plant, Theobroma cacao. A bar of dark chocolate has 214mg of theobromine, while milk chocolate has only a third of that. Adding the 27mg of caffeine in a 1.5 oz dark chocolate bar, we can calculate that it has a stimulating effect equivalent to a can of cola. Theobromine relaxes smooth muscle tissue. The milder effect explains why people don’t experience the surge-and-crash patterns that they get from coffee or strong tea.
Phenyl ethylamine (PEA), also known as a “love drug” is prevalent in chocolate. It triggers the release of natural opiates in the brain. That produces ecstatic feelings, similar to those when we fall in love. Here is the reason why it is such a perfect Valentine gift! It is interesting to mention here that salami and cheddar cheese have about ten times the PEA concentration of chocolate. Its orgasmic value in chocolate the PEA actually gets from anandamine. It was discovered not long ago by Daniel Piomelli of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, while he was studying effects of marijuana on human brain. You would have to eat 25 pounds of chocolate to get the high you could get from smoking a joint. However, chocolate produces a longer lasting pleasure than marijuana thanks to two cousins of anandamine, which itself has a very short lifespan. They are: N-oleoylethanolamine and N-linoleoylethanolamine. Scientists are studying this phenomenon closely, hoping to find an effective unintrusive antidepressant. The mood lifters in chocolate work synergistically to create a perfect storm of happiness in the brain. That is why people crave chocolate.
Human Rights and Environmental Issues around Chocolate
Although one of the most pleasurable things we can afford, chocolate has been surrounded by a lot of human suffering through centuries. Slavery and child labour until present days have been a tragic companion of the sweet multibillion industry. Market forces are driving the wholesale cocoa prices ever lower. Cocoa today sells for half of what it was 30 years ago. A program called Fair Trade is successful among coffee growers, now extended to cocoa and some other items, such as tea, spices, sugar etc. It helps small farmers’ coops, paying them a guaranteed price and a premium for the community development. Democratic participation in the decision making is encouraged and forced labour is eliminated. Environmental agricultural practices, including organic farming, are standardized. Fair Trade is one of the most ethical movements of our time. By choosing fairly traded products, consumers make a choice for a more just world.
In Africa vast rainforest tracts have been destroyed for the purpose of cocoa plantations. This huge environmental damage not only affects the climate change and extinction of animal species, but mono-cultures are very intensive on use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides as well as water for irrigation.
As a conclusion, we as consumers in the North have a choice to vote with our dollar for clean, ethically produced food, and what can be a better occasion than when we make a gift of love.
References:
Rowan Jacobsen, Chocolate Unwrapped (Invisible Cities Press)
Carol Off, Bitter Chocolate (Random House Canada)
Stephen T.Beckett, The Science of Chocolate , 2nd ed. (RSC Publishing)
BIO:
Radmila Rakas is an environmental advocate, a WHEN volunteer and an entrepreneur. Together with her husband, she runs a small chocolate business in Toronto, focused on organic Fair Trade chocolate. Currently she is giving chocolate workshop to pledge funds for Haiti earthquake relief.