Chocolate - Cocoa 'Vitamin' Health Benefits Could Outshine Penicillin

health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so striking that it may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health ScienceDaily 3/12/07 "Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told C&I that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin...Hollenberg has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa drinking on the Kuna people in Panama. He found that the risk of 4 of the 5 most common killer diseases: stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes, is reduced to less then 10% in the Kuna. They can drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week. Natural cocoa has high levels of epicatechin...'If these observations predict the future, then we can say without blushing that they are among the most important observations in the history of medicine,' Hollenberg says. 'We all agree that penicillin and anaesthesia are enormously important. But epicatechin could potentially get rid of 4 of the 5 most common diseases in the western world, how important does that make epicatechin?... I would say very important'..."

Most flavanols like epicatechin are taken out of chocolate products because of the bitterness they can add to flavor... guess how fast chocolate makers are trying to get these back in their products?

More on the wonders of cocoa in these earlier posts. I can't think of a supplement that is causing as much excitement in the health community. Next thing you know they'll find a flavanol or two that works more effectively on sirt1 than resveratrol. Ok maybe that's going too far, but you never know. Did Sinclair's lab test flavanols in cocoa?

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