You probably know that chocolate was used by indigenous Mesoamericans in rituals and commercialized and popularized over the centuries by Europeans, eventually becoming the products we know today. We’ve also told you about some health benefits of chocolate, but do you know that documentation of its medicinal purposes also has a long history?
A team of researchers from UC Davis thought it would be a good idea to have these uses in one place, so they presented it at a symposium in 2000, then published a supplement to the Journal of Nutrition. You can read the full text here.
In general, the researchers identified three consistent health-related roles that cacao/chocolate were believed to play:
- To treat emaciated patients to gain weight
- To stimulate nervous systems of apathetic, exhausted, or feeble patients
- To improve digestive function and stimulate the kidneys
Because both indigenous Meso- and South Americans and Europeans had an understanding of health and medicine different from modern knowledge, the prescribed uses for treating specific ailments varied greatly. They also sometimes contradicted one another, as physicians, native curers, and regular people observed different effects of cacao on the body. However, manuscripts from the 16th through 20th century recommended cacao or chocolate consumption for the following:
- Aztecs used cacao beans to treat stomach and intestinal issues (reported as early as 1590 in the Florentine Codex), including dysentery.
- A simple preparation of cacao, not mixed with other ingredients, was used with patients suffering from fever and liver ailments.
- In the 1700s, some accounts reported that chocolate was beneficial in delaying the growth of white hair and in reducing hypochondria.
My favorite recommendation is from a Spanish physician wrote, in 1672, that chocolate is nourishing to those who require “speedy refreshment after travel, hard labor, or violent exercise” and that it is “exhilarating and corroborating [to] all parts and faculties of the body.”
The article contains a list of more than a hundred ailments to be treated with chocolate, from the mundane to the strange. Current scientific research doesn’t support many of these medicinal uses of chocolate, but that doesn’t mean you can’t indulge when you’re feeling under the weather or just need a little boost!
Check out the full list here; which uses surprise you? What would you write a chocolate prescription for?
Post written by: Rebecca Dobrzynski