Chocolate may contain a chemical with anti-ageing properties 鈥� but don鈥檛 start stuffing your face just yet. The chemical is found mainly in dark chocolate and it remains to be seen whether eating chocolate is good for you overall.
鈥淭here鈥檚 lots of things in dark chocolate, and there are pros and cons to everything,鈥� says at University College London.
The chemical in question, theobromine, is probably best known for being deadly to dogs. But it has also been shown to , and there is some evidence of health benefits .
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To learn more about these potential benefits, Saad and his colleagues analysed data on 500 women from a study called TwinsUK. This measured levels of a number of components in blood, including theobromine.
It also looked at epigenetic changes 鈥� the presence or absence of chemical tags on DNA that alter the activity of genes 鈥� in blood cells. Some of these changes are associated with ageing聽and can be used to estimate whether a person鈥檚 鈥渂iological age鈥� is higher or lower than their chronological age.
鈥淲e found a link between levels of theobromine in blood and epigenetic estimates of your biological age,鈥� say team member 聽at King鈥檚 College London. People with higher theobromine levels were more likely to have a biological age that was lower than their chronological age.
The team then analysed similar data from 1160 individuals from a study in Germany called KORA, and found the same association.
One strength of the latest study is that it uses direct measurements of theobromine in the blood, rather than, say, people鈥檚 reports of how much chocolate they ate. But this also means the team cannot be sure of the source of the theobromine.
Theobromine can be formed by the breakdown of caffeine, although this produces only tiny quantities of the chemical. The main source of theobromine in the diet is cocoa solids, says Saad. Dark chocolate is high in cocoa solids, milk chocolate has lower levels and white chocolate has none. 鈥淚 would not expect one derives much theobromine from a Milkybar,鈥� says Saad.
Bell and Saad both stress that their findings shouldn鈥檛 be taken to mean that eating more dark chocolate will make you live longer. It could be that the negative effects of other components, such as sugar, outweigh any beneficial effects. Further studies will be needed to confirm the results, but the team doesn鈥檛 have the funding needed to do them, says Bell.
鈥淚t certainly reinforces my commitment to eating dark chocolate, but I opt for a keto version that contains no sugar,鈥� says at the University of California, Los Angeles, who developed the epigenetic measure of ageing used by the team.
However, at Heidelberg University in Germany, who did the study in worms, says there are some shortcomings. One is that chocolate contains many chemicals called polyphenols that might amplify the effect of theobromine.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think our research can untangle whether it鈥檚 the theobromine alone or whether it鈥檚 theobromine interacting with something else,鈥� Saad acknowledges.
bioRxiv
