Epicatechin is a compound found in cocoa and the health benefits of this compound are so striking that is may rival penicillin in terms of importance to public health reports Marina Murphy in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI.
Normal Hollenberg is a pofessor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He said that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin.
Hollenbergy has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa on the Kuna people of Panama. He found that the risk of 4 out of the 5 most common killer diseases (stroke, cancer, heart failure and diabetes) is reduced to less than 10% among the Kuna who drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week. Natural cocoa has high levels of epicatechin.
'If these observations predict the future, then we can say without blushing that they are among the most important observations in the history of medicine,' Hollenberg says. 'We all agree that penicillin and anaesthesia are enormously important. But epicatechin could potentially get rid of 4 of the 5 most common diseases in the western world, how important does that make epicatechin?... I would say very important'
Nutrition expert Daniel Fabricant says that Hollenberg's results are so impressive that they may even warrant a rethink of how vitamins are defined. Epicatechin does not currently meet the criteria. Vitamins are defined as essential to the normal functioning, metabolism, regulation and growth of cells and a vitamin deficiency is usually linked to disease. At the moment, the science does not support epicatechin having an essential role. But, Fabricant, the vice president of scientific affairs at the Natural Products Association, says: 'the link between high epicatechin consumption and a decreased risk of killer disease is so striking, it should be investigated further. It may be that these diseases are the result of epicatechin deficiency,' he says.
Most forms of commercially produced cocoa products have too much sugar and don't posess enough pure cocoa to provide a high number of flavanols. However, there are some products on the market that offer high concentrations of unprocessed dark chocolate (cocoa). Click here for a list of healthy dark chocolate products.
