Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women. (Men too.) You don’t even want to know your chances of dying from it, at least not before we tell you about this advice from a Dallas cardiologist about how you can switch to healthier foods to thwart heart disease and greatly reduce your risk of heart attacks.
Tags: · almonds, avocado, blueberries, cardiologist, cocoa, dark chocolate, epicatechins, flavonoids, heart disease, heart health, kale, leading killer, organic, pesticides, Salmon, Shyla High, Why Most Women Die, women and heart attacks
By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now
Over the past year or so, there’s been a velvety, yummy buzz: Chocolate may just save the planet!
Divine Hearts are actually good for your heart
Actually, that’s a stretch. But in the months leading up to the Copenhagen climate talks last December, several chocolate-makers claimed they were venturing further into fair trade practices, including Nestle, Mars and Cadbury.
Add to that the promising method of “cabruca farming” in Brazil — a way of supplementing rainforests with valuable cacao plants to offset wholesale slash-and-burn techniques. Then multiply those happy developments by now-abundant data showing that chocolate — dark chocolates and bittersweets, specifically — are good for our health, and you’ve got a growing body of evidence that semi-sweet, Fair Trade chocolate is not only good for body, heart and soul; it could be good for the environment.
“Chocolate is considered to be a super food,” says Steven Flood, co-owner of Fat Turkey Chocolates, an organic chocolatier based in Austin, Texas. “You could actually live and sustain yourself on chocolate alone and get everything you need. And you wouldn’t get fat. Because there’s not a lot of fat in dark chocolate.”
Tags: · chocolate, chocolate health benefits, dark chocolate, eco-friendly chocolate, environmentally friendly chocolate, Fair Trade, Fair Trade practices, heart-healthy dark chocolate, lower blood pressure, rainforest preservation, what chocolate to buy
Green Right Now Reports
European researchers have found more evidence that the emotional benefits of dark chocolate are real and not just wishful thinking
They are reporting in a study published in the Journal of Proteome Research what we’ve all been hoping they (or someone) would — that eating dark chocolate regularly, albeit in small amounts, lowers stress levels.
More precisely, the study found that volunteer subjects who ate dark chocolate every day for two weeks had fewer stress-reaction hormones and chemicals in their bodies. The researchers verified this by testing the urine of these young, healthy test volunteers.
Tags: · dark chocolate, natural stress reducers, stress levels, study shows dark chocolate reduces anxiety
Barbara Kessler
Andrew Winston
Danielle Nierenberg
Anthony Swift