Sunday, June 7, 2009

Chocolate facts

Watched this video today:

Wonder how much of that is true. Video provides the following information.

* Chocolate comes from a plant that is native to central america. Cacao beans or coco beans are processed to get coco butter and sugar will be added. white chocolate is sugar added to cocoa butter. Milk chocolate is milk plus sugar and coco butter.
* History of chocolate goes back to 1400 BC. Aztecs made a drink out of coco beans. Chocolate comes from the Aztec word XOCOLaaTL, which is actually two words that mean bitter water. They brew coco beans like a coffee and so name is from its taste.
* Average american consume about 22 pounds of chocolate every year. That is equivalent to 2.8 billion pounds every year for entire country.
* 92% of them eat milk chocolate that does not have any anti-oxidants.
* Hershey produce 45%, Mars produce 15%, Nestle produce 15% and most chocolate is produced from America.
* It takes 27000 square miles of land to produce that chocolate. That area is equivalent to three times size of NJ, a little larger than west Virginia or little bit smaller than south Carolina.
* Hershey standard bar has 20% coco. Coco percentage goes down, when sugar percentage goes up.
* Dark chocolate is better than milk chocolate. Dark chocolate has anti-oxidants.  Anti oxidants help fight cell damage, fight cell deterioration and combat stress. They have benefits.
* Most chocolates on the market are processed with alkalites that causes loss of anti-oxidants.
* Consuming 40gm of dark chocolate causes anti oxidants to stay in blood for six hours.
* Chocolate contains stearic acid, a fatty acid. Stearic acid does not cause to rise cholesterol level. It is similar to coconut ingredients.
* Dark chocolate has also some minerals in it, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc.
* Chocolate has readdictive drugs and substances, out of which two are drugs, sugar, caffeine and theo-bromine.
* Caffeine and Nicotine are natural pesticides developed by some plants to keep bugs from eating those pants.
* Theo-bromine is stimulus substance deadly to horses, dogs, cats, parrots and rodents.
* There is no living animal on earth that would eat raw coco bean.
* Humans have ability to metabolite and eliminate theo-bromin.
* Giving little bit of chocolate to pets make them sick and too much of them can cause them to die.
* Pet clinics are overwhelmed during the Halloween times because owners gave their Halloween candy to their pets.
* It is outlawed to give chocolate to race horses, because it causes unfair advantage and is going to speed up the racing ability.
* Plants have bitter flavor in taste as survival mechanism.
* Theobromine is considered to be a contributing factor to acid reflex, since it relaxes the muscle between stomach and aciphex.
* Chocolate has high calorie content. Standard Hershey milk chocolate with serving size 55gm contains 270 calories, 140 calories from fat and 16 gms of total fat which is equal to 25% of total fat for the day.
* Milk chocolate has 33gm of carbohydrates and 31gm of those are from sugar, that is equivalent to 7.5 tea spoons of sugar.
* Chocolate has no vitamins, fiber and enzymes.
* Average chocolate has 220 calories. That is equivalent to calories from one whole apple, one and half oranges or a cup of whole strawberries.
* Chocolate has very few healthy benefits but is not as good as eating fruit.