Chocolate comes from a tropical
tree that is believed to have originated in Ecuador. It became a popular part
of the diets that the native people enjoyed, along with other native plants,
such as corn and potatoes, which were completely unheard of in Europe. By the
16th century the Spanish were acquiring great amounts of knowledge
from their meetings with the civilisations of the New World. It was the Spanish
that introduced chocolate to the Western world. They discovered that the
Central Americans drank the bitter drink with pepper and spices and the
conquistadors preferred to sweeten their beverage with cane sugar. Starting
with the Spanish Monarchy, this new brown drink spread initially to Italy,
France and then on to the rest of Europe.
Later in Italy, the solid chocolate bar was invented and now, in the 21st
century, it is one of the most popular food types and flavours in the world.
This week however, a new study
has suggested that chocolate is not only delicious but also beneficial to our
bodies. Solid bar chocolate is one of the richest sources of flavanols we have
in our diet. These are naturally occurring molecules that are biologically
active and are also found in tea leaves and certain fruits and vegetables. The
study suggests that age-related memory loss can be reduced by a higher intake
of flavanols. Great news for Chocolate lovers:
As people age, they typically
show some decline in cognitive abilities, including learning and remembering
such things as the names of new acquaintances or where one parked the car or
placed one's keys. This normal age-related memory decline starts in early
adulthood but usually does not have any noticeable impact on quality of life
until people reach their fifties or sixties. Age-related memory decline is
different from the often-devastating memory impairment that occurs with
Alzheimer's, in which a disease process damages and destroys neurons in various
parts of the brain, including the memory circuits.
In the CUMC study, 37 healthy
volunteers, ages 50 to 69, were randomized to receive either a high-flavanol
diet (900 mg of flavanols a day) or a low-flavanol diet (10 mg of flavanols a
day) for three months. The high-flavanol group also performed significantly
better on the memory test. "If a participant had the memory of a typical
60-year-old at the beginning of the study, after three months that person on
average had the memory of a typical 30- or 40-year-old," said Dr. Small.
He cautioned, however, that the findings need to be replicated in a larger
study -- which he and his team plan to do.
Nevertheless, you still need to
be careful about which chocolate you buy. To acquire a high level of flavanols
then you will need to buy chocolate that has a high percentage of cocoa. These
types of bars are often called “dark chocolate” and don’t contain milk. They
also have much less sugar than the low cocoa chocolates and so it is better for
you in two ways. Luckily for you, in Barcelona you can some of the best brands
of chocolate worldwide, organically sourced ingredients and toasted and
produced here in Cataluña:
Blanxart and Chocolate Solé
For reference
Adam M Brickman, Usman A Khan, Frank A Provenzano, Lok-Kin Yeung, Wendy
Suzuki, Hagen Schroeter, Melanie Wall, Richard P Sloan, Scott A Small. Enhancing dentate gyrus function with dietary flavanols improves cognition in older adults. Nature Neuroscience, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nn.3850
