Chocolate’s benefits: a gift from the gods

It came from the gods. It was a plant, but not just any plant. Rather, it was a tree that provided the gods with a drink, a special drink for them and them alone. But one among them, Quetzalcóatl, stole the plant and brought it to the people, after descending from heaven on the beam of the morning star.

Soon enough, the people, too, were enjoying the bitter drink the tree produced. The drink proved enormously popular among mortals, with many ascribing to it divine properties. Consequently, it was used during sacred ceremonies, while the plant’s beans soon became a popular form of currency.

After several thousand years, European explorers discovered the drink, but found it too bitter for their liking. However, in the early 16th century, Hernando Cortez, who had previously described the concoction as a “bitter drink for pigs,” discovered that its harsh taste could be tamed with a little — or a lot of — sugar.

Europeans soon took to this sweetened form of the drink, and they discovered that the plant’s beans, properly sweetened, could be used to make irresistible food, instead of only drink. And then in 1753, just as the tree was proving its versatility, legendary Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus gave it its scientific name, the name by which we still know it today: Theobroma, meaning, literally, the “food of the gods.”

More specifically, the tree was called the obroma cacao. And the letters of that second word offer a broad hint what the fuss is all about: Cocoa, or chocolate, a food and drink that many of us consider divine, even if we no longer believe that it was literally delivered to us by the gods.

And now medical science is finding that chocolate’s effects, rather than merely its taste, are worthy of conferring on it divine status. It’s been known for some time, for example, that cocoa and dark chocolate are extremely high in antioxidants, far higher than most fruits and vegetables.

These antioxidants, along with antiinflammatory properties, suggest that dark chocolate is important for heart health, and scientific studies have found that it can apparently reduce bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol, reduce blood pressure and improve blood flow.

And while the evidence is typically less than clear- cut, it has also been suggested that chocolate may be useful for the prevention of cancer and diabetes, while also improving cognitive function and muscle recovery. It also allegedly possesses aphrodisiac properties, and while the evidence is particularly slim on this point, heaven knows there are no end of intrepid souls willing to test the hypothesis.

Of course all of this comes at a price, we’re told, as chocolate’s high caloric content also makes it among the most fattening of foods. That could be, although recent studies have found that dark chocolate can help to reduce cravings for other foods, thereby keeping chocolate eaters relatively thin.

And that means that chocolate might at once be both life- saving and slimming, might make us look better and feel better and for a lot longer. Food of the gods indeed.