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News cannot get much better than the following report which appeared in the Globe and Mail newspaper on Friday August 6 1999. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = GO-AHEAD, EAT THAT CHOCOLATE: DOCTORS NOW SAY IT'S GOOD FOR YOU Reuters News Agency, London Feeling guilty about that chocolate snack? Well, don't. Researchers have finally confirmed what the industry has said for years: chocolate is a good source of the kind of antioxidants found in tea. A studied by Dutch doctors analyzed chocolate to quantify the amount of catechins, from the family of flavonoids. Flavonoids are among the most powerful antioxidants, compounds that protect against chemicals in the body, called free radicals, that damage cells. Some scientists have said that because of the flavonoids in tea, drinking one or more cups a day can reduce the risk of having a heart attack. "Drinking a cup of tea and eating a chocolate cookie might be not only enjoyable, but healthy as well," the doctors wrote in the medical journal The Lancet, published today. The study was carried out by doctors from the Department of Chronic Diseases and Epidemiology at the National Institute of Public Health and Environment in Bilthoven with the support of the European Union Commission. "The antioxidant content of chocolate is four times that of tea," they wrote. They found that chocolate contributed 20 percent of the catechin intake in a sample of the Dutch population while tea contributed 55 percent. And for real chocolate connoisseurs, the researchers looked into which chocolate was better: dark or milk chocolate. Dark chocolate had the highest catechin content, milk chocolate had less, but both had more than black tea, they said. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = To which I say, "What? Only one cookie?" Now, all we need is Kathrynne's blessing. Happy eating! Roger Buxton CG for Judy Hazlett (49 / 29 dx) P.S. My apologies in case anyone else submitted this, but I was cut off from PIENET over the past weekend.