Two landmark trials — the largest RCT of cocoa flavanols ever conducted and a three-decade prospective cohort study — examined what daily cacao consumption does to cardiovascular mortality and type 2 diabetes risk. The findings were statistically significant and clinically meaningful.
From a Columbia University discovery about the dentate gyrus to a 3,562-person clinical trial and a 6.9-year prospective cohort study — three independent lines of research converging on the same conclusion: flavanols restore hippocampal memory and slow cognitive decline across five cognitive domains.
What's actually inside a cacao bean — and how most of it disappears before it reaches you. The biochemistry of polyphenols, the three compound classes, how processing destroys them, and what that means for the research doses that produced clinical results.