The Ultimate Sinful Foods: Chocolate, Coffee & Wine; are they really that bad?

As a nutritionist I’m a big fan of avoiding calorie and fat counting and instead using your food as medicine. Science is realizing food is so much more complex than the obvious sum of their parts: fats, carbs, proteins and calories. There are other properties present, that are far more influential on health, so let’s have a look at some.   Chocolate:   Dark Chocolate in particular, coffers many health benefits, due largely to its antioxidant behavior. It can lower blood pressure, boost the immune system, protect from infection, lesson heart attacks, and may even prevent Alzheimer’s by preventing amyloid plaque build up in the brain.   Dark Roasted Good Quality Coffee:   Coffee is one of the most complex foodstuffs we regularly ingest; with over 7000 different chemical molecules; with most foods only contain 2000. It is high in a powerful antioxidant, chloregenic acid, which can switch off inflammation, and it’s also high in another antioxidant: melanoidin, which can fight ageing, inflammation, lower blood pressure, prevent dental cavities and even traps heavy metals!   Red Wine:   Wines can be delicious, but can we use any of them as a medicine, and gain health benefits from them? Yes, we can, particularly the red variety, and those that have been stored in French Oak! Red wine has a large amount of polyphenol type antioxidants present, which can help in the fields of heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and even some cancers. But new research has found, that when the wine is aged in French Oak barrels, the oak itself releases another antioxidant which combines with the wine and is 700 times more potent than pomegranate antioxidants, comparable to some pharmaceutical anti-inflammatory drugs.   For more on using your foods as medicine, purchase a copy of Honor’s new book: “A Diet in Paradise” online at www.honortremain.com.au or from selected stockists.