Felice Chocolate: the key to eternal youth?
A German confectioner claims to have come up with the first anti-ageing chocolates.
Adolf Andersen from Hamburg developed the chocolates with Dr Michael Kentze, from the Munich-based Kentze Institute for Age-Prevention Medicine.
Made with dark chocolate, mango and soya milk, the creators believe the Felice chocolates not only make you happy, but keep you young.
Dr Kentze said: "Dark chocolate contains three times as much cacao as milk chocolate and so the concentration of phenylethylamine and polyphenol is high.
"The first substances increase the heartbeat and releases feelings of well-being. The distribution of serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline are also increased, which makes you feel more cheerful. And polyphenol protects the cells from free radicals."
He added: "Soya milk not only reduces menstrual complaints in women, but tightens the skin and protects men from prostate problems.
"Mango contains enzymes, which activate the metabolism and act to reduce inflammation."
The pair admitted that the chocolates combined with an unhealthy lifestyle would not have a great effect, but recommended one or two pralines at the end of the day with a cup of tea.
A tester for the Felice chocolates said: "They don't fill you up but you immediately feel 15 years younger." This study investigated relationships of culture and physiology with chocolate cravings. Gender differences in chocolate cravings in Spaniards and Americans were examined using parallel Spanish- and English-version questionnaires administered to 259 undergraduate students at one university in Spain and 306 at one university in the US. Responses were examined separately for men and women in American and Spanish samples using multivariate analyses to control for variables like chocolate availability and cultural involvement (which was described by country of birth, years spent in that country, media use, and cultural identification). Chocolate was the most craved food among all Spanish students, but only female American students. A total of 91% of American women and 59% of American men reported chocolate cravings, and this significant difference persisted when controlling for American cultural involvement. In contrast, 90% of Spanish women versus 78% of Spanish men reported chocolate cravings, but the gender difference was no longer significant when controlling for Spanish cultural involvement. These results do not reject a role of physiology in chocolate cravings, but suggest that American culture encourages disproportionately more chocolate cravings among females than males, and that globalization may have led to a similar craving pattern among Spaniards, although gender differences in cravings are less clear-cut than they are in the US.