Chocolate and Beer

The chocolate we love today evolved from an accidental byproduct of ancient breweries, claim researchers. Over 3,100 years ago in Central America the cacao plant was used to make a celebratory beer-like beverage, prized as a status symbol scientists revealed earlier this week.

The researchers identified residue of a chemical compound that comes exclusively from the cacao plant in pottery vessels dating from about 1100 BC in Puerto Escondido, Honduras.

This is 500 years earlier than any other documented use of cacao, which later became and important luxury commodity in Mesoamerica before European invaders arrived, and is now the basis of the modern chocolate industry.

The Cacao seeds were used to make ceremonial beverages consumed by elites of the Aztecs and other civilizations, and were also used as a form of currency. The Spanish conquistadors who destroyed the Aztec empire in the 16th century fell in love with the chocolate beverage made from cacao seeds served in the palace of the emperor. But this wasn’t how chocolate beverages started out the researchers found.

"The earliest cacao beverages consumed at Puerto Escondido were likely produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds," the scientists wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One of the researchers, anthropologist John Henderson of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said cacao beverages were being concocted far earlier than previously believed, and that this beer-like drink started the whole chocolate craze.

"What we're seeing in this early village is a very early stage in which serving cacao at fancy occasions is one of the strategies that upwardly mobile families are using to establish themselves, to accumulate social prestige." Henderson told Reuters. "I think this is part of the process by which you eventually get stratified societies.”

Henderson, says the cacao brew consumed at the village of perhaps 200 to 300 people probably evolved into the chocolate beverage not by design but as "an accidental byproduct of some brewing." Henderson said.

Thanks to that brewery mishap, here are a few of the scientifically backed benefits of dark chocolate that we enjoy today:

1. Chocolate is known to improve blood flow to the brain - a University of Nottingham study found that drinking cocoa drinks rich in flavanols improves blood flow to key areas of the brain for up to two to three hours. Flavanols in the cocoa drink are a key ingredient of dark chocolate. The study also suggested that cocoa flavanols in chocolate may enhance brain function to help fight sleep deprivation, fatigue, and the effects of ageing.

2. Reduce high blood pressure – the flavonoids in cocoa have been found to help balance out blood pressure and reduce clotting. Researchers from Germany’s University Hospital of Cologne found that cocoa consumption lowered blood pressure by an average of 4.7/2.8 mm Hg. The New York Times recently reported on a study showing that dark chocolate is almost as effective at lowering blood pressure as the most commonly prescribed antihypertensive drugs.

3. Boosts mood – It is reported that certain chemicals in dark chocolate can improve your mood and ease premenstrual symptoms.

4. Prevents cell damage—Pure, dark chocolate is loaded with antioxidant chemicals that help prevent cell damage and improve blood sugar levels.

5. Reduces risk of heart attack - a researcher from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine said that eating a few squares of dark chocolate every day may reduce your risk of dying from a heart attack by almost 50%. The study also found that blood platelets clotted slower in people who eat chocolate.

Thanks ancient Mesopotamia!

Posted by Rebecca Sato The Daily Galaxy

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1248646820071112