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andydp
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Joined: 23 Sep 2003
Posts: 8122
Location: Upstate NY near Albany
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 Posted: 07/19/05 - 19:58 Post subject: Chocolate is a health food !!!!
I knew there was something good about chocolate....
Chocolate as healthy as red wine - report
20 July 2005
KUALA LUMPUR: Chocolate must be regarded as a health food on a par with red wine, and a bigger taste has to be developed for it in new markets to sustain poor African cocoa farmers, food and industry experts say.
"Everyone knows that red wine is good for the heart, but so is cocoa because it has the same ingredient called flavonoids which reduces hyper-tension or high blood pressure," Cesar Fraga, a nutritionist at the University of California, told a conference in Malaysia.
Fraga, from Argentina, said he gave a group of Argentine footballers cocoa products for a study and they showed a dramatic improvement in blood circulation.
"Now you know why we produce such good footballers," he said.
Chocolate makers had to rid their products of a junk food image, the week-long international cocoa workshop and seminar in Kuala Lumpur heard.
"The electronic consoles that people buy for their kids are making them couch potatoes and, with the calories they are taking in, obesity has to follow," Hope Sona Ebai, a Nigerian cocoa industry official, said.
"I don't think we can blame chocolate for that."
Rather than take the blame for a lifestyle problem, chocolate makers had to go on the offensive.
Delegates said consumption had to be increased in emerging markets if West African cocoa farmers, the biggest producers of the crop and among the world's poorest, were to survive price lows such as those in 2000.
Cocoa prices hit a 27-year low in 2000, slipping below $850 (489 pounds) a tonne on surplus world production.
They are around $1,400 now, about half their levels in 2002 when a civil war in top producer Ivory Coast caused a price spike.
"We have to make people in developing countries eat more chocolate," said Jan Vingerhoets, executive director of the International Cocoa Organization, which groups both cocoa producing and consuming nations.
"There's still some nonsense that people believe in, like eating chocolates give you a headache."
Per capita consumption of cocoa in Europe was 12 kg while in Japan it was 2.2 kg.
In countries such as India and China, levels were less than 0.5 kg.
Ebai, who heads the West African-dominated Cocoa Producers Alliance, said producing countries could set aside a certain volume of beans that were not of premium export quality to produce cheaper chocolate for domestic consumption.
"Right now, chocolate is seen as a luxury product, a rich man's product. But if you make it more affordable, more people will eat it.
"Ultimately, you've got to sell it as a health product."
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They say dark chocolate is the best.
It's cool to be an Oompa Loompa. 
