Mercola - Natural Health Products & Articles

What is your comfort food? People usually eat comfort food for familiarity, emotional security, or as a special reward. Many types of foods or snacks could fill the urge for a comfort food depending on a person's taste, but in any given culture, there are foods that become universally accepted comfort foods.

One of these comforts foods are chocolates. Man's love for chocolate dates back for thousands of years. Cocoa has been found in 2,600-year-old Mayan ceramic vessels in northern Belize. But why are chocolates so addicting?

Dr. Adam Drewnowski found that eating chocolate causes your brain to produce natural opiates, which dull pain and increase a feeling of well-being. Researchers at the Neurosciences Institute of San Diego also discovered three chemical compounds in chocolate that mimic cannabinoids (the active ingredients in marijuana) in your brain.

Chocolate as an Antioxidant?

Good news for chocoholics out there - Hershey's has announced that a new study shows that cocoa and dark chocolate products have been found to contain significant levels of resveratrol, a very powerful antioxidant compound, which is also produced by certain fruits and vegetables including grapes, raspberries, mulberries and peanuts.

Scientists tested six product categories, including cocoa powder, baking chocolate, dark chocolate, semi-sweet baking chips, milk chocolate and chocolate syrup, and found that gram for gram, cocoa powder yielded the highest average amount of resveratrol and its sister compound, piceid.

Because resveratrol is found in grapes, many researchers believe that it is linked to the so-called the "French Paradox," the observation that French people who have poor diets but drink wine have better cardiovascular health.

Resveratrol is unique from nearly all antioxidants because it can cross the blood-brain barrier to help protect your brain and nervous system. In fact, resveratrol is so powerful that a solution of this antioxidant applied to fruit can triple its shelf life.

Studies show that resveratrol may increase the lifespan in human cells, protects your cardiovascular system by neutralizing free radicals, and helps support your body's natural defenses.

Resveratrol benefits you in so many ways, including:

There is also evidence that resveratrol can help slow down the signs of aging and help prevent Alzheimer's disease.

Does this mean that you can eat all the chocolates that you want?

Getting Antioxidants from the Right Source

Dr. Mercola says that you would be better off avoiding all types of chocolate, especially if you have health problems, and get important nutrients from fruits and vegetables.

If you can't control your chocolate addiction, what you need to do is find the products that use the least destructive processing techniques. Cocoas and chocolates differ in how many of the naturally present polyphenolic bioflavonoids, including resveratrol. Typical commercial chocolate retains less than half of its flavonoids after processing.

If you have to eat chocolate, eat only dark chocolate, Dr. Mercola says. Milk chocolate contains milk, which cancels out chocolate's antioxidant effects, according to a study published in the journal Nature. Proteins in the milk bind with the antioxidants, making them less easily absorbed by your body.

Milk chocolate also contains more sugar than dark chocolate. Sugar can seriously impair your immune systems functions.

If you do have the willpower to resist your chocolate cravings, you can get resveratrol from a healthier source - muscadine grapes. But resveratrol is just the tip of the iceberg because muscadine grapes give you a host of antioxidants, including:

Muscadine grapes are native to the southeastern United States. They look different from other grapes because they're bigger and have that luscious purple color. Muscadines also have thicker skins and still retain their seeds (90% of the nutritional health benefit of the grape is located in the skin and seeds), unlike grapes that have been genetically-modified to be seedless.

But Dr. Mercola is not entirely writing off chocolates. He agrees with research findings that have just determined that eating a precise amount of chocolate-6.7 grams a day (one small square, two or three times a week) - offers you important health benefits, such as improving your glucose metabolism (important for preventing diabetes), blood pressure, and cardiovascular system.

Muscadine grapes, however, are something you can eat everyday. The choice is yours.