Healthful Chocolate
It's every chocolate lover's wish that their favorite indulgence could somehow be healthy for them. Now, chocolate makers claim they have granted that wish. Mars Inc., maker of Milky Way, Snickers and M&M's candies, next month plans to launch nationwide a new line of products made with a dark chocolate the company claims has health benefits.
Called CocoaVia, the products are made with a kind of dark chocolate high in flavanols, an antioxidant found in cocoa beans that is thought to have a blood-thinning effect similar to aspirin and may even lower blood pressure. The snacks also are enriched with vitamins and injected with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols from soy.
A paper published by the American Heart Association concluded that chocolate contains chemicals, including flavanols, that have the potential to reduce heart disease. But it added researchers still don't know enough about flavanols to make dietary recommendations.
Other major chocolate companies also have started promoting the flavanol content of their dark chocolates, such as Hershey's Extra Dark, introduced last fall with highlights on its label touting its 60 percent cocoa content and high level of flavanol. Dark chocolate, which contains more flavanols than regular chocolate, is the fastest growing segment of the $10 billion-a-year chocolate market. Hershey reports that its dark-chocolate sales have grown 11.2 percent over the past four years. Last year, Hershey Co. acquired San Francisco-based Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker Inc., known for its dark chocolate with high cocoa content and baking products, and plans to add new dark-chocolate products.
Mars created a new division, Mars Nutrition for Health & Well-Being, to distribute CocoaVia. The company has sold the CocoaVia products online for a couple years. They are already available at retail stores in 34 states, selling for nearly $1 a bar.
