Cocoa and chocolate are consumed throughout the world, as they provide instant enjoyment and pleasure. Chocolate is one of the most popular examples of foods consumed during comfort eating.
Cocoa and chocolate, on the other hand, are also correctly viewed as highly caloric foods and their use is often restricted by primary care physicians and dieticians, especially when weight loss is needed.
Moreover, it is now clear that cocoa and chocolate do not contain addictive substances in amounts high enough to cause cravings. Indeed, cravings are the result of an unhealthy relationship with the food, resulting from attributions displayed in newspaper and magazine headlines such as “chocolate is addictive”, but the alleged craved-for chemicals are merely myths.
In terms of health benefits, cocoa indeed has the highest polyphenolic contents of all foods on a per-weight basis and markedly contributes to the total dietary intake of flavonoids. The main subclasses of flavonoids found in cocoa are flavanols, particularly the flavanol monomers catechin and epicatechin, and their oligomers, also known as procyanidins. Although the precise mechanisms responsible for their purported health benefits are unclear and likely to be manifold, flavonoids and flavanols have been shown to possess a range of cardiovascular-protective properties, including antioxidant and antiplatelet effects, immunoregulatory activity, and vasorelaxation.
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