Will Chocolate Reduce Dental Cavities?

If you haven't heard about it yet, you will very soon.  Chocolate is a very healthy food to eat, but not just any chocolate, dark chocolate! It's the flavonoids in chocolate that are beneficial to your health.

Studies have found that the flavonoids in foods protect against heart disease and cancer.  According to the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, flavonoids are a large family of polyphenolic compounds synthesized by plants. Interest in the biological activities of cocoa polyphenols is increasing steadily.

It has been found in patients with end-stage liver disease that those given a meal containing 85 percent-cocoa dark chocolate had a markedly smaller rise in blood pressure in the liver, or portal hypertension, than those given white chocolate.



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Ok, so chocolate is healthy for you, but what about the sugar in chocolate and what about chocolate's effect on your teeth or what it does to the plaque in your mouth.  According to a study done in Isreal by a group of colleges and universities, they stated that the high caloric content of chocolate, particularly of some less pure forms, should be considered before recommending uncontrolled consumption. Another study I found on cocoa is that cocoa bean husk extract is highly effective in reducing mutans streptococci counts and plaque deposition when used as a mouth rinse by children.



                                                  
  


Matter-of-fact, according to BBC News, a study carried out by researchers at Osaka University in Japan found that chocolate is less harmful than many other sweet foods because the antibacterial agents in cocoa beans offset its high sugar levels.

The American Society for Microbiology took oral strains from the Culture Collection of University of Gothenborg.  They found that the oral strains barely grew on chocolate agar and were pleomorphic or varying shapes of short rods.

A couple of dental research associates carried a study in Minnesota and they found that the remineralization of enamel was observed when chocolate milk was used as a between meal snack.  It is not clear from their study if milk was the main ingredient in the remineralization of enamel or if chocolate had anything to do with it.  It is very possible that both milk and the chocolate played a combined part.



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