SWEET BEAN

I'm on my way to buy a ton of cocoa.

Although I ingest Vitamin C, B-Complex and low dosage aspirin every day, I'm also going to slug down as much cocoa as my digestive system (and brain) will tolerate.

I'm always eating chocolate.

I know that I am addicted to it.

I just bought a little tin of dark chocolate truffles for my wife which I put in the refrigerator.

I haven't told her yet about them being there.

You can guess why.

I hope I don't read in five or ten years that all of the cocoa that I intend to eat was not quite what it was touted to do.

Well, I'm here at the chocolate factory.

Time to shovel the cocoa into my truck bed.

It's cocoa time!

“Epicatechin is biochemical found in teas, wine, chocolate and some fruit and vegetables.

Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, believes that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin.

Hollenberg has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa drinking on the Kuna people in Panama. He found that the risk of 4 of the 5 most common killer diseases: stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes, is reduced to less then 10% in the Kuna. They can drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week.

Natural cocoa has high levels of epicatechin.

'If these observations predict the future, then we can say without blushing that they are among the most important observations in the history of medicine,' Hollenberg says. 'We all agree that penicillin and anaesthesia are enormously important. But epicatechin could potentially get rid of 4 of the 5 most common diseases in the western world, how important does that make epicatechin?... I would say very important'

At the moment, the science does not support epicatechin having an essential role. But, Fabricant, who is vice president scientific affairs at the Natural Products Association, says: 'the link between high epicatechin consumption and a decreased risk of killer disease is so striking, it should be investigated further. It may be that these diseases are the result of epicatechin deficiency,' he says.

Currently, there are only 13 essential vitamins. An increase in the number of vitamins would provide significant opportunity for nutritional companies to expand their range of products. Flavanols like epicatechin are removed for commercial cocoas because they tend to have a bitter taste.”

Cocoa Benefits Could Be

As Important As Penicillin

ScienceDaily.com

3-13-7