CACAU: como esse alimento funcional auxilia na saúde

Abstract

Functional foods have the role of providing basic nutrition with the potential to promote health through mechanisms not provided for in conventional nutrition. They are foods with high concentration of phytochemicals that benefit the health when ingested of regular form. Cocoa polyphenols have antioxidant action and act to prevent disease. Such an approach is needed to guide and encourage the consumption of functional foods by the general population as healthy eating habits are being overlooked. The objective of this work is to encourage the consumption of functional foods, mainly cocoa, by means of cocoa powder or chocolate, since it is a highly palatable food, rich in flavonoids, with great cardiovascular health benefit: controlling blood pressure, improving platelet function and insulin sensitivity, reducing platelet aggregation and acting on the antioxidant system. This purpose will be achieved through a bibliographical review, being researched scientific articles in the sites Google Academic, Scielo and scientific magazines. The study showed that the benefits of cocoa are in the high concentration of polyphenols, and the more bitter the chocolate, the higher the concentration. But the amounts of chocolate consumption are not yet well established.