Eating chocolate and drinking red wine

Eating chocolate and drinking red wine
-will it improve your heart health ?
Studies have repeatedly suggested that foods like dark chocolate, red wine, berries etc reduce the risk of heart disease. The common link in all these foods is a group of substances called polyphenols and flavonoids present in them
What are polyphenols and flavonoids?
Polyphenols are natural compounds found in plants that are believed to have beneficial health effects. There are thousands of polyphenols, but one has attracted the most attention to date—resveratrol, which is found mainly in red wine and has been suggested to have potential cardiovascular, anticancer, and antiaging benefits.
Flavonoids are a class of polyphenols. They include the following subclasses:
• Anthocyanidins—In blueberries, red wine, and strawberries.
• Flavan-3-ols—In apples, black tea, blueberries, chocolate, and red wine.
• Flavones—In celery, garlic, green peppers, and herbal tea.
• Flavonols—In blueberries, garlic, kale, onions, spinach, tea, broccoli, red wine, and cherry tomatoes.
• Proanthocyanidins—In apples, black tea, blueberries, chocolate, mixed nuts, peanuts, red wine, strawberries, and walnuts.
• Isoflavones—In soy products and peanuts.
• Flavanones—In citrus fruit and juices and herbal tea
Resveratrol is a poly phenol but not a flavonoid.
Recent studies have found that more the number of flavnoids from the above group of food stuffs, greater the cardiovascular protection. Five flavonoid classes—anthocyanidins, flavan-3-ols, flavones, flavonols, and proanthocyanidins—were individually associated with lower risk of cardiovascular death. In a study in men, total flavonoid intakes were more strongly associated with stroke mortality—showing a 37% reduction—than with ischemic heart disease, which showed a 10% reduction. In women, the strongest inverse association was observed with flavones, particularly for fatal ischemic heart disease
Thus it is not wine alone or chocolate alone that is protective. Rather, better protection could be from a combination of all the foods listed and if one looks at the first five groups in the list above, most of these foods fall under the category of healthy foods already - fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, tea and cocoa, garlic and broccoli, blue berries and spinach etc etc.
Another caveat one must remember is that many of the studies showing beneficial effects have used products enriched with flavonoids. For example in the studies, it is not the chocolate you buy in the shops that showed benefits. Normal chocolate is too full of fat and calories and doesn't contain high levels of flavonoids. One cannot thus recommend that people buy ordinary chocolates to get their flavonoids. Chocolate companies are starting to bring out flavonoid-enriched cocoa powders and chocolate bars and that may be the way to go with the healthy-chocolate message.
Also, the amount of polyphenols and flavonoids will vary with the growing conditions, the amount of sunlight and water, and the country of origin
Thus, it may appear that the best things to eat and drink are chocolate and red wine, only because this is what has been most studied and most popular. But one can say that there is also significant evidence of benefits with teas, fruits, nuts, seeds, garlic, kale, broccoli and others listed above. Hence a healthy mixture of these healthy foods is recommended. Thus if you always eat an apple every day, try berries or other type of fruits instead. Try new vegetables—kale or broccoli—and introduce more nuts into your diet. Little changes in the diet can achieve a wide variety of these compounds.
Finally, although the most convincing evidence with flavonoids is on vascular benefits, there is also some suggestion of positive effects on the brain and cancer.
Everyone has to eat. Why not eat things that are said to be good for you?!