No April Fool’s Joke: Chocolate Ingredient fights Obesity and prevents Diabetes
Photo Source: SuperFeast.AU.Com - Cacao Nibs
After Silvia Bürkle, co-founder of metabolic balance, reported about the reason why eating dark chocolate keeps our heart and our cardiovascular system healthy, another recently published study demonstrated that a key cacao compound proves to be most effective in preventing weight gain, fat mass, impaired glucose tolerance, and insulin resistance!
Researchers at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute discovered that oligomeric procyanidins (PCs) possess the greatest anti-obesity and anti-diabetic bioactivities of the flavanols in cocoa. The latter result suggests that chocolate might also assist in treating diabetes.
The study, published in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, was immediately picked up by countless news outlets around the world.
These results - along with a recent publication from Harvard Women’s Health, which reported that flavonoids in chocolate reduce blood pressure and unhealthy LDL cholesterol, increase healthy HDL cholesterol, improve blood flow, and lower insulin resistance - further solidify that sensible food choices indeed have a profound impact on our health!