In the last 5-10 year many scientific article was born which describe the health aspect of eating chocolate. So called. âhistoricalâor ânaturalâ people such as the ...
Chocolate as a Functional Food - Antioxidant Content of Chocolate Erno Gyimes, Erzsebet Gabor, Katalin Polczer, Sandor Nagy* Department of Food Engineering University of Szeged, H-6725 Szeged, Moszkvai krt 5-7. HUNGARY * Göteborgs Food Ltd. Budapest, Hungary
Abstract In the last 5-10 year many scientific article was born which describe the health aspect of eating chocolate. So called „historical”or „natural” people such as the Indians knew this that's one of the reasons they ate chocolate, which - among other things -, contains numerous antioxidant compounds. In fact they may can’t know the details but felt the positive effect of cocoa/chocolate eating. The antioxidant content of cocoa is well known, the most of papers shows the ORAC number of cocoa or chocolate. In our paper we tested commercial chocolate bars with different cocoa contents using different methods for determining antioxidants, partly by analyzing the antioxidant effect among the samples, partly by exploring the applicability of various methods. In addition to the FRAP and DPPH methods, the total phenolic content was measured too (TPC method). Also we set out a method to extract the hidrophilic together with hydrophobic antioxidant components of chocolate sample. Based on these measurements we found that in the chocolate samples, using any of the three measurement methods, the increase in cocoa mass content resulted in a linear increase in antioxidant content and effect.
Introduction
Table 1. Some bioactive molecules
The chocolate as well as other cocoa product contains bioactive molecules. Most of components have positive human health (see Table 1). The cardiovascular protective chocolate is particularly important. Recent research has positive effect on the brain and the nervous system as well.
some effect effects shown
of of of a
Molecules
Effect
Cocoa
Chocolate Dark
Theobromin
na.
na.
Risner, 2008
na.
na.
fat burner, CV protect Epicatechin
1,00-4,00 %
na.
na.
Biochemist, 1993 Foster, Smith 2003
1,80 mg/g
na.
na.
Risner, 2008
3,20 mg/g
na.
na.
Risner, 2008
2,40 mg/g
na.
na.
Risner, 2008
