Why Chocolate is Good For You

Chocolate is perfect for those vegetarians who don’t eat meat. After all, chocolate comes from a plant, and nutritionists are always saying that we need to eat more plant food. Chocolate comes from the cocoa tree or, Theobroma cacao, as it is scientifically known. Although these trees can be found in a number of geographic locations, they are thought to have originated in the Amazon forests. The cocoa that we are used to seeing in the tin cans at the grocery store come from the cocoa seeds. Manufacturers grind up the cocoa sees to make cocoa powder and chocolate.

antioxidants bring lots of benefits to the table when it comes to health – and chocolates are full of antioxidants. Antioxidants help to build up the immune system and protect your body against diseases. And their main benefit is their ability to fight the oxidation of cells within the body. When oxidation happens within cells, the process very often damages the cell which can possibly lead to debilitating diseases such as cancer. Antioxidants can short circuit the oxidation process leaving the cells in good shape. It’s because of this property that antioxidants can slow down the aging process.

Recent studies have shown dark chocolate beneficial in reducing blood pressure, strengthening the heart and vascular system, reducing depression, and lowering cholesterol. There have even been a few studies linking chocolate with helping to combat cancer, although it’s much too early for any company to start developing chocolate cancerprevention pills. But considering how good it tastes, chocolate does seem to have a lot of beneficial health aspects to it.

Just because chocolate can be good for you doesn’t mean that you can eat all that you want. Chocolate has a high fat content, and even though much of it is good fat, too much of any kind of fat is not good for you. In addition, just because chocolate is healthy, doesn’t mean that candy bars or chocolate cake is healthy. Candy bars, in addition to chocolate, have caramel, nuts, nougat, and all kinds of other materials which are not particularly healthy. The same is true for chocolate cake which usually comes with unhealthy frosting – which is essentially butter and sugar.

The Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity or ORAC is a scientific measurement of the antioxidant capabilities of a food. The higher the ORAC value, the greater its antioxidant properties. In tests, surprisingly chocolate has a greater ORAC value than many healthy foods which are touted as being high in antioxidants. For example, blueberries are one of the healthiest fruits around. Blueberries have an ORAC value of around 8700. Dark chocolate has an ORAC value of 13,000 units. And even milk chocolate, which has only a fraction of the antioxidants of dark chocolate, has an ORAC value of 6,700.

‘Miracle’ tree could bring cleaner drinking water to millions

A highly beneficial tree native to northwest India could help provide cleaner drinking water to millions of people across the developing world.

The Moringa oleifera tree is already recognised as having great potential in a world facing climate change, rising population and growing desertification. It’s fast-growing, drought-tolerant and extremely nutritious, with edible seedpods, flowers and leaves. Its bark, roots and gum also have numerous medicinal properties.

Now, new research shows that the tree’s seeds could provide a low-cost means of water purification that could drastically reduce water-borne diseases in the developing world.

Michael Lea, a researcher at Clearinghouse, a Canadian organisation dedicated to investigating and implementing low-cost water purification technologies, says the Moringa-based water treatment technique can produce a 90 to 99.99 per cent reduction in bacteria in previously untreated water. He outlines the procedure at the site Current Protocols as part of John Wiley & Sons’ Corporate Citizenship Initiative.

“Moringa oleifera is a vegetable tree which is grown in Africa, Central and South America, the Indian subcontinent, and South East Asia,” Lea said. “It could be considered to be one of the world’s most useful trees. Not only is it drought resistant, it also yields cooking and lighting oil, soil fertiliser, as well as highly nutritious food in the form of its pods, leaves, seeds and flowers. Perhaps most importantly, its seeds can be used to purify drinking water at virtually no cost.”

When crushed into a powder, Moringa seeds can be used to remove pathogens from turbid surface water, Lea said. The treatment also technique reduces cloudiness, making water not only more fit for drinking but more aesthetically appealing as well.

Despite its live-saving potential, the technique is still not widely known, even in areas where the Moringa is routinely cultivated. Lea said he hopes that, by publishing the technique in a freely available protocol format for the first time, it will become easier to disseminate the procedure to communities that need it.

“This technique does not represent a total solution to the threat of waterborne disease,” Lea said. “However, given that the cultivation and use of the Moringa tree can bring benefits in the shape of nutrition and income as well as of far purer water, there is the possibility that thousands of 21st century families could find themselves liberated from what should now be universally seen as19th century causes of death and disease. This is an amazing prospect, and one in which a huge amount of human potential could be released. This is particularly mind-boggling when you think it might all come down to one incredibly useful tree.”

Currently, some one billion people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America rely on untreated surface water sources for their daily drinking and cooking needs. An estimated two million people — most of them children under the age of five — die from water-borne diseases every year.