Kuna Cocoa

I’ve talked about the benefits of chocolate before on my blog; but while driving home today I listened to another great testimony of chocolate’s wonderful health benefits, so I decided to talk about it again.

I don’t know exactly what radio station it was on, but I found an article that talks about it similarly HERE. I recapped what I learned and what I thought was the most interesting below.

(Picture Source)

A medical professor at Harvard University, Dr. Norman Hollenburg, spent years researching the Kuna tribe in Panama. Some of the Kuna people still live on an island off the coast of Panama, but others moved on to live in the mainland. Dr. Hollenburg found that four of the most common killers, stroke, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, affected fewer than 1 in 10 of the Kuna living on the island compared to the much higher percentage of people living on the mainland. He also said that he has yet to find a Kuna from the island with Alzheimer’s. What’s the difference? Those living on the island drank an average of 5 cups of cocoa every day.

This cocoa they drink is not the Hot Chocolate we are used to. This is pure chocolate scraped fresh from the pods and made into a paste to make the cocoa drink. No milk. No sugar. Just pure chocolate. Chocolate contains a powerful flavanol called epicatechin, which can also be found in tea, wine, chocolate and some fruits and vegetables.

So get your chocolate on!

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups