Studies Highlight Cocoa's Remarkable Health Properties
Date: 12 Mar 2007

Two recent studies suggest compounds in natural cocoa have significant health-giving properties.

One study by Prof Norman K. Hollenberg from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, US was published in the International Journal of Medical Sciences. Hollenberg spent years studying the effects of cocoa-drinking on the Kuna people in Panama. He suggests that epicatechin, a flavanol found in high levels in natural cocoa, should be classed as a vitamin and is as important as penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of its potential to impact public health.

Although only an observational study, Hollenberg's results from his work with the Kuna has been described as "so impressive" by Daniel Fabricant, a nutition expert, that it "may even warrant a rethink of how vitamins are defined".

Hollenberg and colleagues used death certificates from 2000 to 2004 to look at causes of death between the Kuna who live on the San Blas islands and those on mainland Panama. The Kuna on the mainland do not drink the flavanol-rich cocoa.

They found that the risk of 4 of the 5 most common killer diseases: cancer, diabetes, stroke and heart failure, is reduced to less than 10% in the island-based Kuna people, who drink up to 40 cups of epicatechin-rich cocoa a week. the rest