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Saturday, December 23, 2006

Why no one listens to nutritiional advice anymore
Posted by Jill | 6:27 AM
I've already shared you my adventures with Doctor Demented and her Magic Midlife Crisis Crash Diet. As it turns out, I also have elevated triglyceride levels (260) which, while not critical, need to come down, along with LDL and HDL numbers that are better, but not where they should be.

So as we begin the December holiday week with a house full of cookies and other goodies, all prepped to this time really stick with the three-ounces-of-meat rule, eat more salads and oatmeal (which I like) and to make some trying-to-be-healthy mac and cheese on Monday to go with our Pagan Christmas Ham (using a combination of soy cheese-like-substance and reduced fat cheese and whole-wheat rotini), along comes THIS little tidbit to muck up the works:

Scientists at the Harvard University School of Public Health recently examined 136 studies on coco -- the foundation for chocolate -- and found it does seem to boost heart health, according to an article in the European journal Nutrition and Metabolism.

"Studies have shown heart benefits from increased blood flow, less platelet stickiness and clotting, and improved bad cholesterol," says Mary B. Engler, Ph.D., a chocolate researcher and director of the Cardiovascular and Genomics Graduate Program at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing. These benefits are the result of cocoa's antioxidant chemicals known as flavonoids, which seem to prevent both cell damage and inflammation.

Better blood pressure

If yours is high, chocolate may help. Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., director of the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at Tufts University, recently found that hypertensive people who ate 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate per day for two weeks saw their blood pressure drop significantly, according to an article in the journal Hypertension. Their bad cholesterol dropped, too.

People who ate the same amount of white chocolate? Nothing. (It doesn't have any cocoa -- or flavonoids.) Word to the wise: 3.5 ounces is roughly equal to a big bar of baking chocolate, so the participants had to cut about 400 calories out of their daily diets to make room. But you probably don't have to go to those lengths. Just a bite may do you good, Blumberg says.

Muscle magic

Chocolate milk may help you recover after a hard workout. In a small study at Indiana University, elite cyclists who drank chocolate milk between workouts scored better on fatigue and endurance tests than those who had some sports drinks. Yoo-hoo!

TLC for your skin

German researchers gave 24 women a half-cup of special extra-flavonoid-enriched cocoa every day. After three months, the women's skin was moister, smoother, and less scaly and red when exposed to ultraviolet light. The researchers think the flavonoids, which absorb UV light, help protect and increase blood flow to the skin, improving its appearance.

Brain gains

It sounds almost too good to be true, but preliminary research at West Virginia's Wheeling Jesuit University suggests chocolate may boost your memory, attention span, reaction time, and problem-solving skills by increasing blood flow to the brain. Chocolate companies found comparable gains in similar research on healthy young women and on elderly people.


So here is all this supposed scientific literature claiming that a diet high in sugar and saturated fat is the cause of high triglycerides and LDL cholesterol (which they insist is the cause of heart disease, though other research indicates that inflammation, not cholesterol is often the culprit, and you're living on sawdust and rabbit food for nothing. Now, other research says that despite those appallingly high saturated fat numbers on the label of that 71% dark chocolate bar, THIS kind of saturated fat is perfectly OK, because it's stearic acid and supposedly does not increase LDL levels in the blood -- and the flavonoids have other benefits.

Of course, you can get these flavoloids in apples, red wine, tea, onions and cranberries as well. Perhaps even together. Hmmmm....an apple/cranberry/caramelized onion sauce made with red wine ...sounds intriguing.

And believe it or not, here's a recipe. It doesn't have apples in it, but I'm sure you could add them -- apples and cranberries inherently go together well.
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