Chocolates for Valentine: Feeling guilty? Make it Dark!

No matter as a typical male’s gift to female in the U.S., or a typical female’s gift to male in Japan, chocolate is, and always will be, the evergreen super-star on Valentine’s Day all over the world. However, chocolates and other chocolate products have usually been seen as a sweet but dangerous lure, as well as an enemy against our skinny or wish-to-be skinny waistline. So today, if you are looking for a box of chocolate to make your Valentine perfect but at the same time concerning about staying fit: Dark chocolate would be your perfect choice!

Among the various types of chocolate in the market, dark chocolate contains relatively less sugars and fats as well as a lot higher cocoa contents than other products. Under decades of investigation, we now know that thanks to the various bioactive ingredients that cocoa contains, dark chocolate can actually contribute to our health in many ways when consumed in moderation.

As we all know, oxidative stress contributes to degenerative human diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease through multiple metabolic mechanisms in our body. Recently, natural foods and food-derived antioxidants have received growing attention, because they are known to prevent us from those oxidative damages. Vitamin C is probably the most commonly known antioxidant for the general public, and has also been most popularly used as a dietary supplement to prevent oxidative stress-mediated diseases. What most people may not know is, however, dietary phenolic phytochemicals, in particular, the polyphenols prevalent in cocoa, the flavonoids, are among the most powerful antioxidants identified thus far and has a much stronger antioxidant activity than vitamin C.

Researchers from Cornell University found out in 2003 that cocoa actually contains much higher levels of both total phenolic and flavonoids than black tea, green tea, and red wine, which made it very likely to be the one that contains the highest total phenolic and flavonoids contents of all natural foods. In the same study, cocoa also exerted the highest antioxidant activity, which made it very beneficial to our health in terms of its high-quantity and also high-quality antioxidant content.

Below are several Beneficial Effects shown by studies of cocoa and dark chocolate consumption on human health:

• Improve circulation
• Improves cardiovascular health
• Decreases blood pressure ( promotes arterial dilatation effect)
• Lowers cardiac mortality following a first acute myocardial infarction (AMI)
• Lowers the risk of total stroke, cerebral infarction, and hemorrhagic stroke
• Improves brain function (better cognitive test performance)
• Prevention of certain kinds of cancer
• Improves insulin sensitivity
• Improves immune response
• Involves in anti-inflammatory actions
• Provides instant enjoyment and pleasure

Here’s some TIPs for you in choosing your Valentine’s chocolate treat:

• Go dark. Try the darkest chocolate possible to get more beneficial flavonoids.
• Choose low-sugar or fiber enriched dark chocolates. Sugar content may attenuate some of the beneficial effects of cocoa, and it is also bad for your waistline.
• Control portions. Although the health benefits that dark chocolates may provide us seems really obvious, the caloric load of chocolate should not be overlooked.

References:

http://pubs.acs.org.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/doi/full/10.1021/jf0344385

http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/doi/full/10.1080/10408390802066805#tabModule

http://betterlivingthroughchocolate.com/lifestyle/vegetarianism/raw_foodism/chocolate/chocolat-1.pdf

http://www.ajcn.org/content/88/1/58.full

http://av.medpagetoday.com/upload/2011/10/10/1828.pdf

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/1/120.long

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/8/39/

http://www.departmentofmedicine.com/documents/dom/imrp/articles/chocolate_mortality_program.pdf

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/138/9/1671.full

http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/13/1616.full

Cheer for The Reform Movement of School Meals

      Recently, "new school lunch" has become a hot topic not only in the U.S. academia of nutrition, but also for the lay audiences, for it is not only a reform that countless number of nutrition researchers and dietitians has been working toward, but also a historic improvement that concerns every American in some way.

      According to USDA, the new nutrition standards for both the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs was finalized and released on Thursday, January 26, 2012 by Food and Nutrition Service, Department of Agriculture. This rule is scheduled to be effective on March 26, 2012. Compliance with the provisions of this rule by schools must begin from July 1, 2012.
The new school lunches and breakfasts will reflect the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans and also based on the recommendations issued by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research, Institute of Medicine (IOM).

      The major changes in school meals are: 
School Lunch Program:
    • It provides both servings of fruit and vegetable daily rather than one serving of fruit or vegetable.
    • Stricter specification of vegetable subgroups
    • It specifies daily amounts as well as weekly ranges for meat and grain based on age groups.
    • It specifies the amount of whole grains provided daily rather than simply encouragement. 
    • It restricts milk provided to unflavored fat-free or 1% fat only.
School Breakfast Program:
    • It specifies daily amounts as well as weekly ranges for meat and grain based on age groups.
    • Specifies the amount of whole grains provided daily rather than simply encouragement.

      In addition to changes mentioned above, the new regulatory requirements also set the upper-limits for sodium, determined ranges of calorie content, and completely restricted the presence of trans-fat in school meals. 

      This new standard is not only going to help alleviate or even resolve the rising concern of chronic diseases in children, such as childhood obesity, but more importantly, it is going to help building a healthy future for the whole generations affected by the change.  Several studies had been done to examine the correlation between food preference and practice in childhood as well as which in adolescent or adulthood. The results are positive. Study suggests that there’s an enormous amount of learning about food and eating occurs during one’s childhood. This early learning process, although mostly determined by one’s genetic predisposition, however, is also largely influenced by their caregiver’s feeding pattern and modeling effect when they were young. As an old Chinese saying goes, “A child is the father of man.” The new reform of school meals, combined with various existing campaigns devoted to educate parents as well as children themselves, stands a good chance of bringing to us a healthier United States of America in the near future.

References:
1. Final Rule: Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. URL: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-01-26/pdf/2012-1010.pdf
2. Comparison of Current and New Regulatory Requirements under Final Rule.
URL: http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/governance/legislation/comparison.pdf
3. Development of Eating Behaviors Among Children and Adolescents.
URL: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/101/Supplement_2/539.full
4. University students  food preference and practice now and during childhood.
URL:http://pdn.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/science?_ob=MiamiImageURL&_cid=271256&_user=201547&_pii=S0950329305000662&_check=y&_origin=article&_zone=toolbar&_coverDate=31-Jul-2006&view=c&originContentFamily=serial&wchp=dGLzVBA-zSkWA&md5=59f66274c46e37d39d51528e49d41594/1-s2.0-S0950329305000662-main.pdf
5. Comparison of College Students' Current Eating Habits and Recollections of Their Childhood Food Practices. URL:http://pdn.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/science?_ob=MiamiImageURL&_cid=277316&_user=201547&_pii=S0022318299704838&_check=y&_origin=article&_zone=toolbar&_coverDate=30-Nov-1999&view=c&originContentFamily=serial&wchp=dGLzVlB-zSkzV&md5=082c7ea7350663fe3455984d4f3fe23c/1-s2.0-S0022318299704838-main.pdf

Reflection on the Food Aid Cut for U.S. Citizen Children of Illegal Immigrants

According to a recent news article from The Kansa City Star, the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services made a policy change that took effect on October 1^st, and have eliminated food stamps benefits for 1,042 households in which low-income U.S. children live with their illegal-immigrant parents. Under the new policy, while SRS counts the family’s full income, it calculates food stamp eligibility as if the U.S. citizens in the family were the only people in the household.

 In theory, this makes perfect sense in terms of the government’s responsibility of protecting U.S. citizen only. In reality, however, it is not possible for the family to spend all of their income on one group of family members even if they are willing to. Therefore, although both are U.S. citizens, children of illegal immigrants are inevitably discriminated against others in terms of nutrition support. Most of the time those kinds of families are consisted of one or two illegal immigrant parents, sometimes even one or more children who were born in their home country, therefore, do not have legal status, and then one or more children who were born in the U.S. and became American citizens. Like James E. Faust said, "No gift bestowed upon us is so precious as children. They are proof that God still loves us. They are the hope of the future,” I would never doubt the fact that parents are willing to give their children everything that they have, under extreme circumstances, even their lives.  Needless to talk about prioritizing their children’s nutrition needs above their own. Whereas, after all, they need to stay alive to provide for their kids.