Chocolate: (un)healthy source of polyphenols?

There is recent epidemiological evidence that chocolate consumption may improve vascular health. Furthermore, several small-scale human intervention studies indicate that habitual chocolate intake enhances the production of vasodilative nitric oxide and may lower blood pressure. It is hypothesized that potential beneficial effects of chocolate on vascular health are at least partly mediated by cocoa polyphenols including procyanidins. Based on cell culture studies, molecular targets of chocolate polyphenols are endothelial nitric oxide synthetase as well as arginase. However, human bioavailability studies suggest that the plasma concentrations of cocoa polyphenols are manifold lower than those concentrations used in cultured cells in vitro. The experimental evidence for beneficial vascular effects of chocolate in human interventions studies is yet not fully convincing. Some human intervention studies on chocolate and its polyphenols lack a stringent study design. They are sometimes underpowered and not always placebo controlled. Dietary chocolate intake in many of these human studies was up to 100 g per day. Since chocolate is a rich source of sugar and saturated fat, it is questionable whether chocolate could be recommended as part of a nutrition strategy to promote vascular health

The use and domestication of Theobroma cacao during the mid-Holocene in the upper Amazon

Cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) is an important economic crop, yet studies of its domestication history and early uses are limited. Traditionally, cacao is thought to have been first domesticated in Mesoamerica. However, genomic research shows that T. cacao’s greatest diversity is in the upper Amazon region of northwest South America, pointing to this region as its centre of origin. Here, we report cacao use identified by three independent lines of archaeological evidence—cacao starch grains, absorbed theobromine residues and ancient DNA—dating from approximately 5,300 years ago recovered from the Santa Ana-La Florida (SALF) site in southeast Ecuador. To our knowledge, these findings constitute the earliest evidence of T. cacao use in the Americas and the first unequivocal archaeological example of its pre-Columbian use in South America. They also reveal the upper Amazon region as the oldest centre of cacao domestication yet identified.Agricultural Sciences for sustainable Developmen