Chocolate as healthy as red wine - cocoa industry

Chocolate must be regarded as a health food on a par with red wine, and a bigger taste has to be developed for it in new markets to sustain poor African cocoa farmers, food and industry experts said.

"Everyone knows that red wine is good for the heart, but so is cocoa because it has the same ingredient called flavonoids which reduces hypertension or high blood pressure," said Cesar Fraga, a nutritionist at the University of California, at a conference in Malaysia. Chocolate makers had to rid their products of a junk food image.

"The electronic consoles that people buy for their kids are making them couch potatoes and, with the calories they are taking in, obesity has to follow," Hope Sona Ebai, a Nigerian cocoa industry official, said. "I don't think we can blame chocolate for that."

Rather than take the blame for a lifestyle problem, chocolate makers had to go on the offensive.

Delegates said consumption had to be increased in emerging markets if West African cocoa farmers, the biggest producers of the crop and among the world's poorest, were to survive price lows such as those in 2000.

Cocoa prices hit a 27-year low in 2000, slipping below $850 a tonne on surplus world production.

"There's still some nonsense that people believe in, like eating chocolates gives you a headache."

Per capita consumption of cocoa in Europe was 12 kilograms while in Japan it was 2.2kg. In countries such as India and China, levels were less than 0.5kg.

Ebai, who heads the West African-dominated Cocoa Producers Alliance, said, "Right now, chocolate is seen as a luxury product. But if you make it more affordable, more people will eat it. Ultimately, you've got to sell it as a health product."