Chocolate has been drunk for thousands of years, most archeologists agree, but it was the Mayans who relay got the ball rolling by developing savory chocolate drinks.
Scientists are now discovering health benefits and offering some justification for including chocolate in a health diet.
*Harvard Medical School research indicates that drinking 2 cups of hot chocolate per day helps preserve brain health and preserve brain decline in older people. Study conducted at Cornell University shows that the antioxidant concentration in hot cocoa is almost twice as strong as red wine. Cocoa's concentration was two to three times stronger than that of green tea and four to five times stronger than that of black tea.
*Researchers from Cornell University also recommends that ‘hot’ in ‘hot chocolate’ is important as more antioxidant are released when it;s heated up.
*Research indicates that flavanols, the compounds found in coca, have antioxidant properties that help mop up the damage done by free radicals. These same compounds also relax artery walls and keep blood platelets from sticking the arteries thus reducing the chances of heart disease.
*Polyphenol catechin can help boost the immune system from colds to cancer.
*Medical researchers discover that hot chocolate boasts health benefits that may boost longevity, due to the disease-fighting antioxidants in the cocoa.
Hot chocolate and its health benefits
The word chocolate is derived from the Aztecs names for the tree, and for the drink they prepared from the beans. These words live on in Mexican today as ‘choclatl’ for the drink and ‘cacauatl’ for the tree. Chocolate was first cultivated as a crop, by ancient Mesoamerican peoples. They used cacao beans to create a frothy chocolate drink flavored with spices.
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