AP/ March 30, 2010, 9:49 AM

Bittersweet News About Chocolate

Researchers are excited by the potential of flavanols to ward off vascular disease, which can cause heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, dementia and hypertension. Vascular diseases are linked to the artery's inability to make a simple but fundamental chemical called nitric oxide. Flavanols appear to reverse that problem.

"The pharmaceutical industry has spent tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars in search of a chemical that would reverse that abnormality," Hollenberg said. "And God gave us flavanol-rich cocoa, which does that. So the excitement is real."

Hollenberg studied Central America's Kuna Indians, island dwellers near Panama who make their own locally grown, flavanol-rich cocoa.

The Kuna drink a lot of cocoa, and they don't have high blood pressure — except for those who move to the mainland and start drinking commercial cocoa that's flavanol-poor.

Testing the link between flavanols and improved blood flow, Hollenberg fed cocoa with and without flavanols to a study group in the United States and discovered that flavanols seemed to improve blood flow throughout the body.

Another researcher, nutrition professor Carl Keen at the University of California, Davis, has found that flavanols had an aspirin-like effect on blood, among other findings.

Mars contributed to Hollenberg's and Keen's research and countless other projects. The company has collaborated on more than 80 studies.

The company announced last month that its scientists have figured out how to make synthetic flavanols and that major pharmaceutical companies are interested in developing the compounds for prescription drugs.

The health possibilities have many chocolate makers playing up the amount of cocoa in their chocolates, which can also contain sugar, cocoa butter and soya lecithin, an emulsifier that helps the ingredients mix together smoothly.

Next month, Hershey's will release a new Extra Dark chocolate bar containing 60 percent cocoa — more than its 34-year-old Special Dark bar. The cocoa percentage is showing up on many chocolate bars. Neuhaus, for example, has bars with 71 percent, 73 percent and 75 percent cocoa.

"It's great news for consumers that cocoa found in many of their favorite products can contain natural antioxidants," said Hershey's spokeswoman Stephanie Moritz.

Hershey's also recently bought San Francisco-based Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker, known for its dark chocolate, particularly its Nibby Bar, which has real bits of roasted cacao beans mixed with semisweet chocolate.

Even if you find a flavanol-rich chocolate bar, eating one every day would make you gain weight faster than it would lower your blood pressure, said Abby Ershow, nutrition science officer at the National Institutes of Health's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Chocolate lovers don't need a new reason to indulge, Ershow said. "They are going after the taste, which is the main thing chocolate has to offer us all," she said.