Is Your Smoothie Sabotaging Your Health? The Truth About PPO and Flavan-3-ols Do you know anything about flavan-3-ols? These bioactive substances, which may be found in a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, offer a wide range of health advantages. It turns out, however, that just combining fruits may not necessarily ensure that we obtain the full advantages of these substances. That’s accurate! Just like a medical student’s life involves more than just texts and anatomical illustrations, the
You seem to be an expert in this field. Can I ask one question?
How many chocolate chips do I need to eat to get my daily dose of flavonols?What’s the LD50 of chocolate chips?
Okay, so I read up on it (I’m that kind of guy).
Apparently the thing in chocolate that would kill you is theobromine, and it has an LD50 (lethal dose) of 1000mg per kg of body weight. If we’re talking milk chocolate chips, they have 2.4 mg per gram. If you weigh 75 kg (165 pounds) you’d need to eat 75,000 mg of theobromine, which is about 31.25 kg, or just under 69 pounds. A chocolate chip weighs about 0.25 grams, so that’s about 125,000 chips.
However, lots of other things in chocolate are going to make you barf your brains out before you can get anywhere close to that, so the likelihood is you can’t kill yourself eating chocolate.
The best reference I found was this one.
Sounds like I need to put a lot more chocolate chips in my banana smoothies.
Or go straight to the cocoa powder!
Huh, I guess I’m gonna have to cut down a little then. Now can you do the same for the trace lead and cadmium?
The problem there is that there really are no safe levels of lead - it stays in your body and builds up. The safe level of cadmium is 1 x 10^-3 mg/kg/day, so infinitesimally small.
that sounds like a challenge
It isn’t for lack of trying. (See username).
Theobromine is the main poisonous substance in chocolate. Theobromine is thought to have an LD50 of about 1,000 mg per kilogram of body weight in people.
On average, 100 grams of dark chocolate contain 150 mg of theobromine, however individual results may vary. Theoretically, an individual weighing roughly 70 kg (154 lbs) would have an LD50 of around 70,000 mg of theobromine. One would need to eat roughly 467 kg (1030 pounds) of dark chocolate to attain this amount. That is a huge sum that is nearly unattainable!
But long before consuming so much, one would experience various health problems brought on by consuming too many calories, sugars, and fats, as well as other possible toxins.
The amount of flavonol in chocolate varies significantly depending on the chocolate’s kind and processing. While milk chocolate and white chocolate also contain some flavonols, dark chocolate has the largest concentration. A high-quality dark chocolate will typically contain 50 to 170 mg of flavonols per 100 grams.
You may strive for a daily flavonol intake of 200 mg if you want to achieve a possible heart-healthy level. According on the flavonol content of the chocolate, this implies you would need to eat between 120 and 400 grams of dark chocolate.
Keep in mind that the amount of flavonols in chocolate chips varies. You’d need to know the precise flavonol content of the chocolate chips you’re ingesting to get an accurate figure.