Journalist: Barbara Durbin

The Oregonian FOODday

Tuesday, June 15, 1999

Its antioxidant polyphenols, which act a lot like vitamin E, may help your heart, and fight cancer and ulcers.

It sounds like a chocoholic’s dream – a delicious fairy tale come true: Chocolate might be good for your heart, help fight cancer and ulcers.

That’s if …

If chocolate behaves in people the same way it has in test tubes and lab animals.

Scientists don’t want to jump to conclusions, even though an overly eager public already has just one question: How much can I eat?

Researchers are exploring compounds found in chocolate, similar to those in coffee, that seem to help your health.

Joe A. Vinson, a professor of chemistry at The University of Scranton in Scranton, Pa., has studied polyphenols – a class of compounds present in plant foods, including cocoa beans.

In your body, polyphenols are antioxidants, the good guys that go after free radicals. Free-radical molecules are very toxic and reactive, Vinson says. They can weaken cells, making you more susceptible to cancer and heart disease, for instance.

In the lab, Vinson explains, polyphenols "behave very much like vitamin E" – perhaps the best known antioxidant vitamin. Polyphenols also fight against oxidation of LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, which can contribute to heart disease.

When you eat a lot of fat, you’re creating "a negative oxidative effect," he says. Polyphenols might counter some of that "stress."

In one of Vinson’s studies, researchers induced early signs of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) in hamsters by "stressing" them (putting three males in a cage) and controlling their diet.

Hamsters fed even dilute tea as their beverage had lowered lipids – fats in the blood that can contribute to heart disease. (Oh, in case you’re having hamsters to dinner, they don’t particularly like coffee, compared to water. But, Vinson says, they just love wine and beer.)

Vinson notes that studies on human populations have shown tea drinking reduced the risk of heart disease, although nobody knows exactly how that works.

Vinson also discovered that compared with the 20 most commonly eaten fruits and vegetables, chocolate has much higher levels of polyphenols. But slow down before you pour a bowl of Snickers bars for breakfast. This doesn’t mean you should choose chocolate over fruits and vegetables, he warns. He doesn’t advocate eating a lot of chocolate because of its high fat and calories.

In comparing polyphenol contents, Vinson notes cocoa powder comes in first, dark chocolate next, then milk chocolate, and, last, hot chocolate mixes, in which chocolate is more dilute.

He found green, black and oolong teas were higher in polyphenols than other beverages.

Coffee was lower than teas and "very comparable" to red wines, (Remember the "French paradox," whereby the red-wine drinking French have lower rates of heart disease than we do, in spite of diets higher in fat.)

Even so, coffee – even decaffeinated coffee – is higher in polyphenols than fruit juices, which have been touted as good sources of antioxidants. In fact, because Americans drink so much more coffee than tea, coffee (including decaffeinated) is our No. 1 source of polyphenols.

In conjunction with the University of California at Davis, Harold H. Schmitz, a researcher with M&M Mars, Inc. (the candy folks), has found chocolates have a "diverse array" of flavonoids – a category of polyphenols.

Schmitz isn’t saying you should run out and stock up on chocolate. But he notes "well-done" studies that show chocolate’s fat, high in stearic acid, is not the kind that raises blood cholesterol.

Naomi Osakabe, a researcher from Nagoya, Japan, who’s also researching the antioxidant effects, says polyphenols in cocoa bean liquor show anti-ulcer properties in lab rats and inhibit tumors on the skin of mice.

Schmitz notes these results so far as "promising." But like the scientist that he is, he says these are very preliminary findings.

"Good science takes time," he says. But, he adds, "If you like chocolate and it fits into a well-balanced diet," and "if you have dessert – why not chocolate?"