Written by Joyce Smith, BS. Compared to the consumption of milk chocolate, the daily intake of flavonoid –rich chocolate significantly prevented DNA damage and improved the integrity of the nucleus in the buccal endothelial cells of the eighty-four participating young Mexican volunteers.
Obesity, affecting 600 million adults worldwide 1, correlates directly with the development of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease 2,3. Dark chocolate, rich in cocoa flavonoids, has been shown to benefit cardiovascular health and endothelial dysfunction, and also to lower blood pressure 4.
This present randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study 5 evaluated the DNA integrity of buccal epithelial cells before and after consuming 2 grams of either dark or milk chocolate daily for six months. Anthropometric and biochemical measurements were taken before and after chocolate consumption and correlations were determined. The resulting improvements in the biochemical parameters relating to cardiovascular risk and metabolic syndrome were noted and correlates to chocolate consumption were determined.
An initial analysis of the total phenolic and flavonoid content of the two chocolates used in this study found that dark chocolate (70% cocoa) had a significantly higher level of flavonoid content than the milk chocolate (a three-fold increase of 54.6% compared to18% in milk chocolate).
The dominant reported health risk factor in the 84 participating young Mexican undergraduate students was dyslipidemia, with 62 % having abnormal values for at least one of the following measures: total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL-c and HDL-c. At the beginning of the study, 14.4% of the examined buccal epithelial cells (BEC) revealed many nuclear abnormalities (broken egg nucleus, micronucleus and binucleus) which correlated with waist circumference (p<0.001, r=837); fasting plasma glucose (p<0.001, r=785); LDL-c levels ( p<0.001, r=0.697); HbA1c (p<0.001, r=-0.679); and total cholesterol levels p<0.001), r=0.592) of the participants.
Very importantly, after 6 months of dark chocolate consumption, the frequency of nuclear abnormalities decreased significantly as DNA integrity was restored. Some of the anthropometric and biochemical variables, measured before the 6-month chocolate intervention, had also improved. Waist circumference, total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL-c, and HOMA-IR were all significantly lower (p<0.05) after 6 months of dark chocolate consumption. Even blood pressure significantly improved in the dark chocolate group compared to the milk chocolate group, yet caloric intake and proportion of dietary carbohydrates and lipids remained unchanged during the 6-months.
Compared to milk chocolate consumption, the daily intake of flavonoid –rich chocolate significantly decreased the DNA damage in the buccal endothelial cells, which may have been due to an enhanced antioxidant capacity of the dark chocolate flavonoids and a decrease in cellular stress. However, further in vivo studies are needed to determine the mechanisms by which flavonoids protect cellular DNA.
Source: Leyva-Soto, Aldo, Rocio Chavez-Santoscoy, Linda Lara-Jacobo, Ana Chavez-Santoscoy, and Lina Gonzalez-Cobian. “Daily Consumption of Chocolate Rich in Flavonoids Decreases Cellular Genotoxicity and Improves Biochemical Parameters of Lipid and Glucose Metabolism.” Molecules 23, no. 9 (2018): 2220.
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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Posted March 4, 2019.
Joyce Smith, BS, is a degreed laboratory technologist. She received her bachelor of arts with a major in Chemistry and a minor in Biology from the University of Saskatchewan and her internship through the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine and the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She currently resides in Bloomingdale, IL.
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- Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease. 2011; http://www. who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/ Accessed August 22, 2011, 2011.
- Esser N, Legrand-Poels S, Piette J, Scheen AJ, Paquot N. Inflammation as a link between obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Diabetes research and clinical practice. 2014;105(2):141-150.
- Torres N, Torre-Villalvazo I, Tovar AR. Regulation of lipid metabolism by soy protein and its implication in diseases mediated by lipid disorders. The Journal of nutritional biochemistry. 2006;17(6):365-373.
- Grassi D, Socci V, Tempesta D, et al. Flavanol-rich chocolate acutely improves arterial function and working memory performance counteracting the effects of sleep deprivation in healthy individuals. Journal of hypertension. 2016;34(7):1298-1308.
- Leyva-Soto A, Chavez-Santoscoy R, Lara-Jacobo L, Chavez-Santoscoy A, Gonzalez-Cobian L. Daily Consumption of Chocolate Rich in Flavonoids Decreases Cellular Genotoxicity and Improves Biochemical Parameters of Lipid and Glucose Metabolism. Molecules. 2018;23(9):2220.
