DailyDirt: Eating More Chocolate

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Plenty of folks like chocolate, so it makes some sense to try to make chocolate ever so slightly more healthy (as long as the taste isn't horribly affected). If you're going to binge on chocolate in the near future, you might want to check out a few of these links to help rationalize your chocolate consumption.

• Scientists have figured out some simple processing steps that help maximize the naturally-occurring antioxidants in chocolate. Storing cacao pods for a week and roasting them at lower temperatures seem to help make slightly healthier chocolate -- as if anyone needed another excuse to eat chocolate. [url]
• Watch how 12 pounds of chocolate is formed into an enormous Easter egg. Then watch some cacao farmers from the Ivory Coast eat chocolate for the first time. [url]
• The global demand for chocolate is increasing, but the supply hasn't caught up. The price of chocolate might be going up unless farmers figure out how to grow more cacao to feed the world's hunger for delicious chocolate bars. [url]

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Filed Under: antioxidants, cacao, candy, chocolate, food, health

DailyDirt: No More Pure Chocolate

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Most folks like chocolate, but there are a few weirdos out there who don't. Sometimes, chocolate is used to mask the flavor of stuff that's good for you (like vitamins or minerals), but for the most part, chocolate lovers want to keep their chocolate free of adulterants. The supply of chocolate might have a hard time keeping up with the growing demand for it, so it could be difficult to preserve the exact same recipes for chocolate that we have now -- and there could be "vintage chocolates" on the market, sold like fine wines, someday. Here are just a few chocolate tidbits for the choco-philes/chocoholics out there.

• The cacao tree is susceptible to a variety of diseases and environmental threats, but there are different varieties of cacao that are more disease resistant, drought tolerant and productive. However, the flavor of the resulting chocolates could suffer, but consumers might not notice the gradual change in the taste of their favorite chocolates. [url]
• Would you eat chocolate with an anti-aging antioxidant ingredient that claimed to make your skin younger? A $54 box of Esthechoc chocolate contains polyphenols and astaxanthin -- ingredients that the chocolatier states have "clinically proven" benefits for your skin. Sounds like a great excuse to eat more chocolate, but it's probably not as effective as the marketing material implies. Who wants "just the skin" of a 30yo, anyway? [url]
• Chocolates from the UK are a bit different than some chocolates made in the US -- the first ingredient for many American chocolates is sugar, but it's milk across the pond. Also, due to a settlement between Hersey's and Let's Buy British Imports, certain UK chocolate brands won't make it to the US -- and vice versa. (And someday, we'll have more videos like this of people reacting to trying foreign foods.) [url]

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Filed Under: aging, antioxidants, astaxanthin, cacao, chocolate, esthechoc, flavor, food, gmo, taste
Companies: hershey

DailyDirt: Healthier Sodas Still Aren't That Healthy

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's not easy to introduce a new soda (or pop or whatever you like to call carbonated soft drinks). Just try to find a bottle of New Coke, Crystal Pepsi, OK Soda or 7Up Gold -- and those are just the discontinued sodas that had some significant marketing campaigns behind them. The successful introduction of diet sodas has evolved into a trend toward "healthier" sodas with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, real sugar, no BVO, herbal supplements and all sorts of other ingredients that might provide some kind of health benefit. However, some of these healthy sodas are dying off because consumers don't seem to want sodas that sound too good for you. Here are just a few examples of healthier sodas you might want to try.

• Pepsi Special is a diet soda that contains dextrin -- an indigestible fiber that can make a person feel full and reduce the body's ability to absorb fat from foods. This beverage has recently been approved for sale in Japan, but it's not the only soft drink with dextrin on the Japanese market. (NB: drinking a lot of indigestible fiber might keep you in the bathroom for a bit longer than usual...) [url]
• A few years ago, Coke and Pepsi both introduced "healthy" sodas (Diet Coke Plus and Tava, respectively). These carbonated beverages were fortified with vitamins and minerals, but they didn't quite catch on. [url]
• Coke and Pepsi weren't the first to try adding vitamins and minerals to soda -- in 2004, 7Up Plus hit the shelves a few years before Diet Coke Plus and Tava. 7Up with antioxidants also ran into some problems, and a lawsuit from the Center for Science in the Public Interest made the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group agree to stop adding vitamin E to drinks and claiming to have antioxidant health benefits. [url]

Filed Under: 7up, 7up plus, antioxidants, dextrin, diet coke plus, diet soda, drink, fiber, food, health, minerals, new coke, pepsi special, pop, soda, tava, vitamins
Companies: coca cola, dr pepper snapple group, pepsi

DailyDirt: Take Your Vitamins... Or Not. Who Knows What's Good For You?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's not always simple to know what's good for your health. We've seen that the placebo effect is far more complicated than it seems (or is usually presented) as its effects have grown stronger and stronger over the years across many clinical trials. Doctors themselves aren't always certain what's the "best" health advice, and they're constantly re-evaluating whether current recommendations are actually valid -- to develop better recommendations. Here are just a few links on vitamins and some of their (mistaken) benefits.

• Vitamin deficiencies are certainly something to avoid, but some folks are going a bit too far with their vitamins. There is little evidence that antioxidant supplements prevent any kind of disease, but advertisers encourage everyone to take vitamin A and other dietary supplements in vast excess. More is not necessarily better, especially when it comes to vitamins. [url]
• Studies come out all the time that correlate the intake of vitamins with various health benefits, but that's not supposed to lead us to taking more vitamins. You're probably not going to suffer from rickets any time soon, so lay off the vitamin D and just go outside occasionally. [url]
• The amount of iron in spinach was mistakenly thought to be much higher than other green vegetables, but spinach actually doesn't have an extraordinary amount of iron. People also thought that Popeye ate spinach for the iron, but Popeye actually ate spinach for its vitamin A content.... [url]

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Filed Under: antioxidants, dietary supplements, health, iron, placebo effect, popeye, spinach, vitamins