Dubbed “An Apostle for Fitness” in her profile in the Wall Street Journal, Carole has been a featured guest on more than sixty radio and television shows, including NBC’s Today show, CBS’s Early Show, MSNBC’s Countdown, and CNN News. Carole has been featured in magazines such as American Fitness, Diet & Exercise Magazine, and Today’s Health & Wellness, as well as in newspapers such as the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Tampa Tribune, Sacramento Bee, Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. Carole’s book, From Fat to Fit, was named a finalist in the health and fitness category of the National Best Books 2007 Awards, sponsored by USA Book News.

Besides teaching and consulting, Carole has produced a weekly community television show, The Tipping Point and a reality show, Go Fat to Fit. This, fall Carole will serve as mentor to the national AARP Fat to Fit Community Challenge, a new virtual community devoted to fitness and healthy weight loss.

Carole Carson--

Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. Hippocrates

Is Cocoa the New Red Wine?

As researchers discover the medicinal benefits of different foods, we can expect to be bombarded with advice on what to eat to treat or prevent specific medical conditions. As long as it’s a food I like (and I can count the foods I dislike on one hand), I’ll happily eat my way through the entire medicine chest.

And what could be more satisfying than a cup of cocoa? A study in the June 3, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology reported that cocoa was used to prevent cardiovascular disease in diabetic patients. During the month that the diabetic patients drank a high-flavanol cocoa, their blood vessel function improved dramatically . The classification of their blood vessels went from severely impaired to normal.

A month isn’t a very long test period, is it? Amazingly enough, drinking three cups of cocoa a day for 30 days produced results comparable to or better than those achieved with exercise or medications or both.

And there’s more good news. In a study of elderly Dutch men reported in the February 27, 2006 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers concluded that drinking cocoa lowered the participants’ blood pressure and risk of death. In addition, scientists in Spain report their successful efforts at creating a version of cocoa with enhanced heart-boosting medicinal value. They have yet to report their marketing plans.

Flavanol, the medicinal ingredient in cocoa, is also found in red wine and certain fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately for those of us not participating in the research, the flavanol-enhanced cocoa is not yet available to the public. But you can guess it will be.

In the meantime, enjoy a cup of hot chocolate with a clear conscience. But you might want to skip the whipped cream topping!

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Update on Jul 2, 2008 by At Basil & Spice

Reuters UK!   Fox Business!