Education Award Night Chemistry and Biochemistry of Chocolate: A Guilt Free Food Follow-up Joe A. Vinson Department of Chemistry University of Scranton

Friday April 19, 2002 Oak Room Carroll College Campus Center Waukesha, WI

DIRECTIONS

Food and beverages derived from cocoa beans have been consumed by humans for 1500 years, and the beverage was originally used a currency and in religious rites by the Mayans and Aztecs. A short history of chocolate will give some perspective to the science of chocolate. Cocoa pods from the cacao tree Theobroma cacao are harvested and the beans removed from the pods and fermented. Dried and roasted beans contain about 300 chemicals including unique fats, alkaloids, and simple and complex polyphenols. The manufacturing process results in the production of the various types of chocolate including white chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and cocoa power. Chocolate is purported to have aphrodisiac properties and one ingredient actas on the cannabinoid (marijuana) receptor. Chocolate's antioxidant properties will be outlined and compared with other foods. How chocolate's fat and antioxidants are related to heart disease will be discussed in terms of epidemiological, animal, human supplementation, and mechanistic studies. Recent animal and human studies will be described to determine whether chocolate should be considered a guilt-free food.

Joe Vinson was born in Arkansas and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. He attended college at the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his B.S. in chemistry in 1963. He received an M.S. degree in physical organic chemistry at Iowa State University in 1966. He received a research assistantship at the Ames Lab of the Atomic Energy Commission at Iowa State and received a Ph.D. in organic and analytical chemistry in 1967 under the direction of James Fritz. After several teaching positions in Pennsylvania and a two year stint in industry at the J.T. Baker Chemical Company, he returned to academe and is now a professor of chemistry at the University of Scranton in Northeastern Pennsylvania. His research interests are wide-ranging and include drug analysis in physiological fluids and the effect of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants on nutrition and health.