Re[2]: Health Benefits of Chocolate - Free Radical Scavengin

[Alan Watts <wattsa@oak.cats.ohiou.edu>]

All -

I sent the original message to a colleague who in turn replied back -

To: Alan Watts <wattsa@oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
From: Arthur Trese <trese@ohiou.edu>
Subject: Re: Health Benefits of Chocolate - Free Radical Scavenging- OK!



Dear Alan,

    Are you buying up Nestle and Hershey stocks?  An interesting bit of
related trivia... Chocolate is said to be the only plant that contains
phenylethylamine, a neurotransmitter that is released in the brain when
humans spend time with someone they are "in love' with.... or more like,
have a crush on.  That "everything is right in the world" feeling comes, at
least in part, from this drug.  Why else do we send a box of chocolate candy
on Valentine's Day?  So perhaps it is not surprising that your colleague
feels better after a little chocolate.

    For plant pathologists, there is a special place for chocolate in that
the plant comes from S. America, but it is now grown in many areas of the
world's tropics.  There are several very nasty diseases of Theobroma cacao,
the tree which produces the delicacy, and one of the reasons that production
has moved to so many locations was efforts to escape these diseases, but the
pathogens always eventually catch up.  Plantations fail, once the diseases
arrive.  Nestle and Hershey have recently admitted that they are going to
abandon the idea of plantation chocolate.  They are getting out of the
business of growing it, so they are letting the world's small scale farmers
know that if they can grow chocolate in mixed agriculture, sustainable,
diverse systems, there will definitely be a market for it!  For consumers,
it means that prices are sure to go up, as the last of the plantation
systems are abandoned over the next ten years.  Perhaps hoarding chocolate
in those bomb shelters isn't such a crazy idea!


Cheers,

Art Trese


Just thought you might be interested!

Alan Watts
RSO
Ohio University





>     Well, if it's Hershey's chocolate kisses, they dissolve in the stomach
>     are transported to the intestine where they become a multitude of
>     miniature versions of the original kiss, are absorbed and transported
>     into the bloodstream, and finally the miniature kisses stick their
>     pointed end through a cell membrane.  As they enter the cell, the flat
>     backside of the kiss is 'sucked through the tiny initial hole via a
>     pressure gradient that is formed (sort of like sucking on a straw),
>     until the chocolate enters the cytoplasm and affords the cell some
>     degree of radiation protection, by, e.g., absorbing photons, etc.
>     Fortunately, the cell wall quickly self-seals, precluding the
>     hemorrhage of cytoplasm from the cell.  Anything else?  If so, please
>     contact the second addressee above.
>
>
>______________________________ Reply Separator
>_________________________________
>Subject: RE: Health Benefits of Chocolate - Free Radical Scavenging-
>Author:  radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu at guardian
>Date:    1/22/99 12:44 PM
>
>
>Unfortunately it is almost 7:30 p.m. in my country and all shops close now.
>I hope that no nuclear accident will happen tonight before I get my stock
>of chocolate tomorrow morning. I also found out that I have no iodine pills
>at home....
>
>Please observe that it is not enough to stock the chocolate, but you have
>to observe carefully the expiry dates, which means that you have to
>constantly eat a part of the chocolate and to constantly replace it by
>fresh one. This has another advantage: You are always protected by a
>constant concentration of chocolate and cannot be surprised by unexpected
>fallout.
>
>Can anybody tell me about the mechanism, by which the chocolate is
>transported into the cells to protect them?
>
>Franz
>
>
>Franz Schoenhofer
>Habicherg. 31/7
>A-1160 Vienna
>Austria
>Tel.: +43-1-495 53 08
>Fax.: same number
>mobile phone: +43-664-338 0 333
>e-mail: schoenho@via.at
>
>Office:
>Hofrat Dr. Franz Scho:nhofer
>Federal Institute for Food Control and Research
>Department of Radiochemistry
>Kinderspitalg. 15
>A-1095 Vienna
>Austria
>Tel.: +43-1-40 491 520
>Fax.: +43-1-40 491 540
>e-mail: schoenhofer@baluf.via.at
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