Science Figures Out How To Make Chocolate Healthier
One of your vices could one day be a little more virtuous: Scientists are today announcing that they’ve figured out how to make chocolate healthier. (Image via AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)
As far as sweets go, you could do much worse than chocolate. Rich in polyphenols and antioxidants, it has been touted to help prevent heart disease, obesity and diabetes, help us give birth to happier kids and even help us with weight loss.
And that’s just regular ole’ dark chocolate. Now, scientists have found a way to make it even healthier.
The findings will be detailed by researchers from Belgium’s Ghent University and the University of Ghana at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver, and center around how rich in antioxidants the sweet is.
As the researchers explain, it all comes down to tweaking the natural preparation of chocolate. Cocoa beans are removed from pods, fermented in baskets, sun-dried, and then roasted. It’s during that last step, the roasting, that polyphenols, which act as antioxidants, are partially lost. In a bid to up the polyphenol content, researchers added a nontraditional step that “makes our research fundamentally different,” explains Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa: pulp preconditioning.
That simply means they stored the pods — in the case of their experiments, for zero, three, seven, or 10 days — before removing the beans and beginning the fermentation process. A sweet pulp rests between the pod and the beans, and Afoakwa believes the preconditioning gives the pulp time to affect those beans.
Indeed, the researchers found that the cocoa pods stored for a week showed the highest antioxidant activity after roasting — which they also adjusted. Rather than heat the beans for the typical 10 to 20 minutes at 248-266 degrees, they lowered the temp to 242 and upped the roasting time to 45 minutes, and discovered that slower and lower was also best in terms of antioxidant activity.
The researchers’ abstract notes another benefit: “Pulp preconditioning and roasting duration could be used to reduce the astringency and bitterness,” improving dark chocolate’s flavor.
(Also presented at the ACS meeting: what’s really in your pot.)
By Kate Seamons, Newser.com
More From Newser.com:
Your Earwax Says a Lot About You
New Villain in Being Overweight? Your Personality
The Weird Ways 15 Celebs Stay Skinny
The Surprising Reason Why Women Fake Orgasms
Scary Find Awaits Florida Woman Under Her Bed
This article originally appeared on Newser: Scientists Figure Out How to Make Chocolate Healthier
