Chocolate Doesn't Merit Bad Rap

March 7, 1996|By STEVEN PRATT Chicago Tribune

When Montezuma II, the powerful Aztec ruler, downed 50 cups of warm chocolate before visiting some of his many wives, he probably wasn't worrying about how the beverage would affect his heart.

But in modern times, rich, creamy chocolate candies have troubled those concerned about clogged arteries and other facets of their health.

Fortunately, contemporary research indicates that a bar of chocolate per se isn't as health-threatening as a juicy T-bone steak, a slice of cheesecake or some of the luscious centers of filled chocolates. Of course, that doesn't mean you want to gorge yourself on Ghirardelli while reclining on a daybed like a Modigliani model.

Let's start back in the 15th century with Monty and his friends. The Aztecs and Mayans fermented, dried and roasted cacao beans. They then beat the beans into a paste that was shaken vigorously in a gourd with hot water, chili pepper and perhaps a little vanilla and corn flour. All of those foods, native to the New World, were unknown to Europe until Columbus' voyages.

If you want a rough approximation of this robust, invigorating drink called theobroma ("food of the gods''), mix a tablespoon of cocoa powder, 1/8 teaspoon of ground red pepper, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, a teaspoon of cornstarch and a cup of hot water in a blender. Forget sugar: That was a European contribution. The Aztecs didn't even have honey, at least as we know it.

If you find the drink repulsive and bitter, you can realize how sugar-dependent we have become. The Mexican chocolate beverage called atole may be similar to theobroma except it has lots of sugar.

Although the Spanish and Portuguese took chocolate back to the Old World, where the aristocrats guarded it jealously, it wasn't until the 19th century that it was refined and fashioned into a solid lozenge or chewable bits.

And that process has something to do with its nutritional qualities.

The cocoa bean is high in fat with some starch and protein, making it pretty decent nourishment. Like coffee, it also contains traces of some 300 phytochemicals, among them theobromine, caffeine and phenylethylamine.

Chocolate-makers discovered that if they first extracted the cocoa bean fat, called cocoa butter, and then blended it back into the chocolate powder, they would get a more uniform product. They also learned that butterfat or milk solids could be blended in for a milder and smoother flavor - the origin of milk chocolate.

Cocoa butter, in addition to being a wonderful emollient for the skin, has the property of being a solid at room temperature and a liquid at body temperature without much softening in between. Thus, well-made chocolate will melt in your mouth, not in the wrapper.

Most of the fat in cocoa butter is a saturated fat called stearic acid. And this is the good part: Recent research shows that stearic acid, unlike other saturated fats, does not raise cholesterol levels.

Even though stearic acid is technically a saturated fat, it appears to slightly lower total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein (LDL or "bad cholesterol''), says Penny Kris-Etherton, a dietitian and professor of nutrition at Penn State University in University Park, Pa. Her conclusion comes from several studies she has done comparing cocoa butter and chocolate to other fats in the diets. That research corresponds with stearic acid studies by Drs. Scott Grundy and Margo Denke at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

One theory is that before it has a chance to wreak havoc with the body's cholesterol mechanisms, stearic acid is converted by the liver to oleic acid, a benign mono-unsaturated fat like that in olive oil.

Unfortunately, dairy butterfat - the "milk" in milk chocolate - is a pretty potent saturated fat, so those dark chocolates without it probably are better choices for people concerned about their hearts.

But even milk chocolate, which has a proportion of approximately four parts cocoa butter to one part butterfat, didn't raise cholesterol levels in Kris-Etherton's experiments.

Some chocolate products contain no fat at all. Pure powdered cocoa has little or none. Hershey's Syrup, that age-old canned chocolate flavoring, has no fat ... or protein. It's mostly sugar.

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