Let your mind play across these possible futures.

Scenario 1: You walk into a health food store and an entire wall is lined with varieties of chocolate promising to cure everything from heart disease to sunburn.

Scenario 2: You receive a prescription from your doctor and take it to the pharmacist. You idly ogle forbidden sweets at the counter as she fills the script then hands you a bottle of “chocamet” or maybe “cardiochoc”. Chocolate-based medicine: the age of chocaceuticals is upon you.

Take a deep breath and wipe the drool from the page. It’s true: chocolate is being spoken of as a health food and pharmaceutical drugs based on chocolate are in the pipeline. The rub is that cocoa is the key healthy ingredient in chocolate and cocoa content varies widely from chocolate to chocolate. The healthiest option is a dark chocolate with 70-80 per cent cocoa.

Yet the studies trumpeting chocolate’s healthy impacts keep on coming. So let’s discover the truth about society’s favourite indulgence: the cocoa bean.

 

Chocolate the Aztec way

Chocolate has been consumed in various forms for at least 2600 years. In Central America, successive civilisations from the Olmec and Mayans to the Aztecs embraced chocolate with gusto.

In fact, the world’s first documented chocoholic is the Aztec king Montezuma. When Hernando Cortez and his Spanish conquistadors stumbled across him in 1519, Montezuma was in the habit of quaffing around 50 flagons of cacahuatl or xoxocatl every day. This drink was the forerunner of the hot chocolate we drink today.

If you want to make chocolate the way Montezuma drank it, the closest you’ll get is to mix cocoa powder with water (or wine), corn meal, vanilla and chillies. Tip this from one container to another to make it froth and drink it cold.

Drink your ChocoZuma, though, at your own risk. The Aztec palate was very different from ours and cacahuatl is quite bitter — which is why Cortez and his Spaniards very quickly decided to heat the drink and add sugar while removing some of the spice.

Even then chocolate took a while to take off in the European homeland until, in the 1600s, the English began adding milk to their hot chocolate and a gastronomic phenomenon was born.

In 1828 a Dutchman named Van Houten found a way to press the cocoa butter out of the beans. This meant the beans could be pounded to a cake, then mixed with sugar and some of the original cocoa butter re-added to make a solid.

In 1879 the Swiss Daniel Petr added powdered milk to the solid chocolate and the rest, as they say, is delicious — I mean, history.

Today in Australia we eat or drink approximately six kilograms of chocolate per person per year. This places Australia among the top 10 chocolate-consuming countries, but far behind the Swiss who eat 10kg per head every year.

Around the world, approximately six billion tonnes of chocolate are consumed annually. For years, this chocolate eating has been a guilty pleasure but now that is changing. The medical journals are full of studies reporting the potential health benefits of chocolate.

Chocolate as medicine

Chocolate is based on cocoa, which comes from the bean of the cacao tree. The tree is thought to have originated in Brazil and grows in tropical climates all over the world.

The botanical name of the Cacao tree is Theobroma cacao — theobroma being Greek for “food of the gods”. Everywhere it’s been consumed, chocolate has been regarded as a gift that holds medicinal properties.

Only over the past 200 years has chocolate become regarded as an unhealthy indulgence, but now that’s beginning to change as science rediscovers the powers of the cocoa bean.

Cocoa beans have more than 600 chemical components and 230 of these are believed to have possible health benefits. Many of these beneficial compounds are polyphenols (or flavonoids). In fact, the cocoa bean is naturally a richer source of flavonoids than broccoli or green tea.

When the cocoa bean is processed it produces cocoa solids that are rich in flavonoids and cocoa butter, a fatty substance that contains no flavonoids.

Mars Incorporated, maker of M&M’s and other chocolates, is looking at forming a partnership with pharmaceutical firms to make drugs based on these flavonoids. The chocolate maker admits, though, that the first of these medicines is at least five to seven years away.

While the pharmaceutical firms are interested in chocolate, it takes literally hundreds of millions of dollars to get a single pharmaceutical drug to market. Understandably, there’s reluctance to commit the funds until they’re certain of the outcome.

So, what are the claims being made for chocolate and which of them stand up to scrutiny?

 

Chocolate at a Glance

Milk Chocolate The most widely consumed form of chocolate today, milk chocolate is made from cocoa butter, cocoa solids, milk, sugar and vanilla. Amounts of each of these will vary from product to product.

Dark Chocolate This is bitterer than milk chocolate as it contains more cocoa and no milk. It therefore contains more health-promoting flavonoids than its milky brethren. Some dark chocolates have 70 to 80 per cent cocoa and the rest is sugar, cocoa butter and sometimes vanilla.

White Chocolate It’s a bit cheeky to call this chocolate at all as it contains no cocoa (and therefore no flavonoids). More properly it should be dubbed “white sugary fatty stuff”, although that may not be commercially viable. It’s made from cocoa butter, sugar, milk and vanilla.

Cocoa solid content varies so much that, according to Food Standards Australia, some products such as like boxes of “chocolates” aren’t legally chocolate at all.

Chocolate on trial

Alas, when you eat “chocolate” you’re eating much more — or sometimes less — than cocoa depending on the form of chocolate you choose. It’s also believed that modern processing of chocolate destroys a large portion of the beneficial flavonoids. Hence moves are afoot to develop new processes that will preserve as many flavonoids as possible.

Despite this, many of the studies mentioned below were done using commercially available forms of chocolate, so some of the health benefits do linger on in the modern food.

 

Chocolate as a mood booster

It had been thought that chocolate boosts levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, inducing a feeling a wellbeing and even euphoria. Recent research from the University of New South Wales, however, suggests this isn’t the case.

On the bright side for chocolate fanciers, the research did suggest chocolate might activate the dopamine system of the brain. This system generates a sense of positive reward and also the anticipation of pleasure.

Chocolate also links into the opioid receptors of the brain and acts in a similar way to marijuana. The narcotic actions of marijuana arise because of a compound called THC that binds to “feel-good” receptors in the brain.

While chocolate doesn’t contain THC, it does contain something called anandamide that binds to those same receptors. Chocolate also contains substances that stop anandamide from being broken down so the “buzz” lasts longer.

On top of all of this, the taste and texture of chocolate in the mouth are utterly and sensuously pleasurable. These qualities on their own are enough to boost a low mood.

 

Chocolate as an aphrodisiac

When Cortez and his men met with the Aztec people, several of the literate among them kept journals of what they saw. This passage from the journal of Bernal Díaz suggests why the Spaniards took such a keen interest in cacahuatl:

“From time to time the men of Montezuma’s guard brought him, in cups of pure gold, a drink made from the cocoa-plant, which they said he took before visiting his wives … I saw them bring in 50 large jugs of chocolate, all frothed up, of which he would drink a little.” (Bernal Díaz del Castillo, 1560)

Chocolate’s reputation as an aphrodisiac is widespread. Who can honestly say they’ve never proffered a chocolate in the hope that it might grease the wheels of affection? In all truth, though, there is scant evidence that chocolate does boost libido except in that it may boost mood. A better mood can make you more disposed to all sorts of things, lovemaking among them.

Chocolate for the heart

Eighteenth-century physicians believed chocolate strengthened the heart. In the 1990s it was found that indeed the flavonoids from cocoa can protect the cardiovascular system and much research has followed.

Tufts University in Boston reported that eating dark chocolate lowers blood pressure. The study assigned subjects to receive dark or white chocolate for 15 days. They found white chocolate, which does not contain flavonoids, yielded no benefit. However, dark chocolate led to a significant drop in blood pressure. The researchers did caution that since even dark chocolate contains high amounts of fat it might ultimately offset any heart benefits.

Another study reported that eating dark chocolate can protect the blood vessels themselves. Eating 100g of commercial dark chocolate was found to improve blood vessel function. In February 2006, a study from the Netherlands reported that the flavonoids from cocoa improved the functioning of the cells that line blood vessels. The study lasted 15 years and found the men who ate the most cocoa were only half as likely to die during the trial as those who did not eat it at all.

But before you go out and binge, even the highest cocoa consumers were only having an average of four grams of cocoa per day.

Sugar and fat from chocolate products are unfortunately counterproductive to heart health. So to really do anything for your heart, eat the high cocoa-content dark chocolates (70-80 per cent) and eat them in small amounts.

 

Chocolate as sunscreen

No — as appealing as the thought may be, this is not about smearing melted chocolate over your body before lying on your towel at the beach. It’s about eating chocolate to provide protection against sun damage.

In a small trial, 24 women added a cup of hot cocoa to their breakfasts for three months. Half of the women were given a dark chocolate drink while the other half had a drink that smelled and looked like chocolate but was not chocolate (a particularly cruel trial design).

After the three months, skin condition was assessed by a number of tests including exposure to ultra-violet light. The skin of the women who’d received the flavonoid-rich cocoa did not redden nearly as much as did the skin of recruits who’d drunk the flavonoid-poor beverage. Women getting the chocolate also had skin that was smoother and moister.

Before you throw out those cosmetics and replace them with chocolates, could you realistically add enough flavonoids to your diet to produce the benefits suggested by this study?

Flavonoid quantities in the chocolate group were similar to those found in 100g of dark chocolate. However, the cocoa drink used provided its flavonoids in a serving that delivered only about 50 calories, which is far below the 400 to 500 calories encountered in the commercial chocolate you’d need to give you that flavonoid hit.

So, with the chocolates currently available, it would be almost impossible to get this daily dose of chocolate flavonoids without tripling your waist measurement. It’s handy, then, that your skin will look good because there’ll be so much more of it to see.

Chocolate for the brain

Chocolate contains many substances that act as mental stimulants such as theobromine, phenethylamine and caffeine, although a 50g chocolate bar has only about 20 per cent of the caffeine in a cup of filter coffee.

To study the effects of various chocolate types on brain power, researchers from Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia had a group of volunteers consume, on four separate occasions, 85g of milk chocolate; 85g of dark chocolate; 85g of carob; and nothing (the control condition).

After a 15-minute digestive period, participants completed a variety of tests designed to assess cognitive performance including memory, attention span, reaction time and problem solving. For once, milk chocolate showed more positive in boosting mental performance than did the dark chocolate, so it’s probably not the cocoa and hence the “chocolate” that’s doing anything.

In truth, it may just be that the milk chocolate was providing a bigger sugar hit and sugar is the preferred fuel for the brain.

 

Chocolate to stop coughs

Researchers from the Imperial College London have found that theobromine found in cocoa is nearly a third more effective in stopping persistent coughs than codeine.

Healthy volunteers were given theobromine, codeine or a placebo and their response to capsaicin (which causes coughing) was measured. Theobromine was 33 per cent more effective at suppressing coughs than codeine and it works by suppressing vagus nerve activity.

So maybe chocolate can suppress a cough, but you’d have to consume around 25 chocolate bars to get the amount of theobromine used in this study — hardly a digestible prescription.

 

Chocolate Fact

Solid chocolate melts at 34 degrees Celsius, which just happens to be a handy three degrees less than the temperature of the average human tongue.

 

The bottom line

So in truth the real health benefit comes from cocoa, not chocolate. To get the most benefit from your chocolate eating, choose a dark chocolate that’s at least 70 per cent cocoa — this maximises your flavonoid content.

Go a step further and choose organic chocolate to avoid pesticide traces. If you want to feel really virtuous about eating chocolate choose a Fair Trade-certified brand, which supports environmentally sustainable production and Deals directly with growers or their cooperatives.

In 1529, the Spanish priest Bernardino de Sahagun wrote the Florentine Codex, a compilation of the medicinal knowledge found among the Aztecs. Included in the Codex was a recommendation that chocolate would “invigorate and refresh” if used in moderation. Excessive use, however, was said to leave the consumer “confused and deranged”.

Almost 500 years later, de Sahagun’s advice holds true. By eating only a little of the right sort of chocolate, you can get the best of this heavenly fruit.