Many women experience ambivalent reactions to chocolate: craving it but also wary of its impact on weight and health. Chocolate advertisements often use thin ideal models and previous research indicates that this exacerbates ambivalence. This experiment compared attitudes to, and consumption of, chocolate following exposure to images containing thin or overweight models together with written me...

BACKGROUND Chocolate is rich in flavonoids that have been shown to be of benefit in disparate conditions including cardiovascular disease and cancer. The effect of polyphenol rich chocolate in subjects with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has not been studied previously. METHODS We conducted a double blinded, randomised, clinical pilot crossover study comparing high cocoa liquor/polyphenol ric...

Objective: Patients with metabolic syndrome are prone to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Regarding the importance of nutritional factors in management of metabolic syndrome, this study was designed to evaluate the effects of dark chocolate consumption on serum lipid profile in patients with metabolic syndrome. Materials and Methods: In this randomized clinical trial, 114 patients with met...

Cue-induced craving is not easily reduced by an extinction or exposure procedure and may constitute an important route toward relapse in addictive behavior after treatment. In the present study, we investigated the effectiveness of counterconditioning as an alternative procedure to reduce cue-induced craving, in a nonclinical population. We found that a cue, initially paired with chocolate cons...

This article gives an account of the origins, evolution and properties of chocolate. Chocolate is processed from the pod or cabosside of the cacao plant, grown in the tropical belt. The origins of chocolate are traced back to the Maya people who were probably the first to cultivate the cacao plant. The early chocolate drink, considered a "drink of the Gods" was mixed with cinnamon and pepper, t...

Cocoa beans are rich source of polyphenols, contributing about 10% of the dry weight of the whole bean and its derivative chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, is considered one of the major contributors of antioxidants to the American diet after fruits and vegetables. At present the wide variation in cocoa processing and in the content and profile of polyphenols make it difficult to determin...

Throughout history, chocolate has been used to treat a wide variety of ailments, and in recent years, multiple studies have found that chocolate can have positive health effects, providing evidence to a centuries-long established use; this acknowledgement, however, did not have a straight course, having been involved in religious, medical and cultural controversies. Christian Europe, in fact, f...

The characteristic flavor of chocolate has to be developed in several processing steps. During processing, the components are mixed, refined, and conched to attain desired rheological properties for a final defined product texture and melting characteristics. A conche is a scraped-surface mixer that optimizes flavor development and turns chocolate mass into a flowable liquid. Through shear and ...

In this work, we will analyze the response of a Metal Oxide Gas Sensor (MOGS) array to a flow controlled stimulus generated in a pressure controlled canister produced by a homemade olfactometer to build an E-nose. The built E-nose is capable of chocolate identification between the 26 analyzed chocolate bar samples and four features recognition (chocolate type, extra ingredient, sweetener and ex...

About half of American women crave chocolate, and approximately half of the cravers crave it specifically around the onset of menstruation. This study examines whether the primary cause of this "perimenstrual" craving is a direct effect of hormonal changes around the perimenstrum, or rather if the craving is a general response in some individuals to stress or other notable events. Insofar as th...