Cocoa And Flavanol-Rich Foods De-Stress Better Than Mac & Cheese

cocoa flavanol stress cup of hot chocolate on wooden table

Photo: Giancarlo Duarte, Unsplash

Miracles Of Nutrition Chemistry Are Easy To Miss. For Better Or Worse:

Picture this: Another stressful day at work; or the disco. Another deadline. Another skip-lunch-and-grab-anything-quick part of your life.

Before you know it, something tells you to reach for that mac & cheese, pizza, or burger.

-Classic comfort foods that somehow always have a bit too much fat. And not just the good kind.

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone.

Scientists have just discovered something fascinating about this daily stress+eat cycle.

And potentially, a way to protect ourselves from its damage…

The Short Answer:

Daily stress often makes us crave fatty comfort foods as part of “stress eating”.
But these foods trigger inflammation in our blood vessels.
This inflammation then stiffens vessel walls and reduces blood flow.
Researchers tested a protective solution with 23 volunteers.
They used a breakfast with about 57g of fat.
This is about equal to a double-cheeseburger and fries.
To counteract stress and saturated fats, researchers gave subjects one type of cocoa drink or another.
The thinking behind this was to get some flavanols into their diets.
The high-flavanol cocoa protected blood vessels from damage.
The drinks with regular processed cocoa didn’t help at all.
Protection lasted 90 minutes after eating and a stressful event.
To achieve the same, you need about 700mg of flavanols.
You can get this from several everyday foods.
Small daily habits could add up to significant protection over time.

Read on to find out the details…

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Fast-Food Sat-Fat. The Daily Damage We Do Not See:

Here’s a cycle many of us know too well: Stress hits. Then we reach for some kind of comfort food.

This comfort food (usually high in saturated fat) sometimes triggers inflammation in our blood vessels.

This inflammation makes vessel walls stiffer and less flexible, reducing blood flow while often raising blood pressure.

Then the next day brings new stress; and the cycle continues.

The Small Study That Hits Like A Punch To The Gut:

The University of Birmingham research team designed a small study that looks surprisingly like many people’s rough mornings.

They gave 23 volunteers a breakfast that would make any cardiologist hurl.

Butter croissants with extra butter, cheddar cheese, and whole milk – packing a whopping 56.5 grams of fat. -In one meal, bro!

For reference, that’s about what you’d get in a double cheeseburger and fries.

Half the subjects got a special high-flavanol cocoa drink (695mg), while others got one with regular processed cocoa (just 5.6mg).

Then came everyone’s worst non-public-speaking nightmare.

Eight minutes of rapid-fire mental math problems, with time pressure – the kind of stress that mimics a hectic workday.

What Happens To Your Waistline Is Worse In Your Blood Vessels:

The regular cocoa group showed classic signs of inflammation and reduced vessel function.

These lasted 90 minutes after the stressful experience.

For my health-nerds out there, scientists measured this using something called Flow-Mediated Dilation (FMD).

-Essentially how well your blood vessels can adapt to changing blood flow.

Bad FMD scores can predict future heart problems, making it an important measure of cardiovascular health.

Now here’s the exciting part: The high-flavanol group’s blood vessels somehow managed to stay healthy and flexible.

-As if they had an invisible shield against both the fatty food and the stress.

And that’s saying something because we’ve previously talked about how stress can negate a lot of good nutrition!

Getting Yourself Some Body-Armor In Daily Flavanols:

So before you go nuts and stock up on hot chocolate like a cocoa-powder Tony Montana,

Here are a few examples of how to get the right amount of flavanols in measures of everyday foods:
(especially because unless you roll your own, you’ll get a lot of sugar in store-brand cocoa mix)

2 regular 8oz. cups of green or black tea
2 cups of mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries)
2 medium apples, plus 1 cup of berries
Or 5.5 tablespoons of unprocessed cocoa (about 1/3 cup)

-Which brings us to another unfortunate point of the study.

Cocoa & Dark Chocolate Taste Great, But They’re Not The Best Sources:

Because of how they’re usually processed, even the best natural (non-dutched) cocoas take quite a bit to get you what other foods have in greater amounts.

And if you believe CocoaVia, the supplier of the high-flavonol powder, you might need 11 or more tablespoons (ie: 1 cup+) of dutched cocoa to get your daily allowance of 400-600mg/day.

So, unless you’re getting their special version of it, you’re much better off getting several different sources in your diet and not actually relying on hot cocoa.

And you can find them all at the flavanoid megapost.

Why This Matters For Your Daily Life. The Math Of Dietary Stress:

Like everything here on HT, this isn’t just about surviving the occasional stress-eating episode.

It’s about protecting ourselves from a cycle many of us face every day.

Study author Dr. Catarina Rendeiro puts it perfectly:
“This research shows that drinking or eating food high in flavanols can be used as a strategy to mitigate some of the impact of poorer food choices on the vascular system.”

So let’s do the math.

If you’re dealing with work stress 5 days a week,

And each stress-eating bout causes 90 minutes of inflammation and reduced blood flow,

That adds up to a lot of cardiovascular strain over months and years.

But by building protective flavanol-rich foods into bits of your daily routine, you’re giving your blood vessels extra support right when they need it most.

Other study author, professor Jet Veldhuijzen van Zanten adds an other key point:
“For those who tend to reach for a treat when stressed or depend on convenient food because they work high-pressure jobs or are time-poor, incorporating some of these small changes could make a real difference.”

-BOOM!

The Bottom Line. Start Where You Are, Not Where You’d Like To Be:

We cannot always avoid stress or completely change our comfort food cravings overnight.

But now we know there might be a way to help protect our bodies from this daily damage.

-Especially because we always hear such generalized hand-waving around dark chocolate consumption.

The key as in most things, is building in small protective habits.

-Like having berries with breakfast or switching to black tea in your morning routine.

Remember: When shopping, look for minimally processed cocoa or stock up on berries, apples, and tea.

Your blood vessels will thank you not just today, but potentially for years to come.

Because sometimes the best health strategies aren’t about upending everything. They’re about adding smart protective measures, a little at a time, to the lives we actually live.