Silly me, I thought I could write up a simple blog post about the health effects of wine and chocolate, just in time for Valentine’s Day. So I go online to search the recent medical literature on the health effects on cocoa, and find that there are now more than 2000 articles on the subject. Needless to say, my comments here are based on a selected list. (You should know by now that wine and chocolate contain many of the same antioxidant molecules that have proven to be so beneficial, and that it has to be in the form of dark chocolate. There are a lot of studies now on how cocoa polyphenols lower blood pressure and help keep arteries clean, and the latest ones provide confirmation of the earlier reports.) One article out just last month caught my eye. It turns out that simply smelling dark chocolate can provide a sense of satisfaction. The researchers proved this by comparing blood levels of insulin and the satiety hormone ghrelin in volunteers who either ate or just smel...
Research in the area of wine and health has exploded in recent years and in this blog I sort through it to see what is really useful. For a definitive resource please refer to my book Age Gets Better with Wine: New Science for a Healthier, Better, and Longer Life.