Chocolate against ... osteoporosis

The goal of the doctorate was to design dark chocolate and dessert chocolate, which will be enriched with vitamins D3 and K2, as well as calcium with a view to supplementing the diet in people at risk of osteoporotic changes. It is worth mentioning that the World Health Organization has recognized osteoporosis as a disease of the 21st century!

- Realization of such an intended goal of the work required solving a number of scientific and technological problems: determining the doses of pharmacologically active substances possible to introduce into a medium such as chocolate, without, of course, affecting its sensory properties. Homogeneous distribution of active ingredients in the entire volume of the substrate, development of product packaging that would effectively protect pharmacologically active ingredients from degradation," enumerates Dr. Ing. Blonski.

Sucrose has replaced birch sugar as one of the most popular sweeteners on the market today, replacing caloric and unhealthy sugar.

- When eating my chocolate, you can't tell the difference between it and regular chocolate. I came up with the idea when I was looking at what amounts of various medicines and supplements my grandparents were taking every day," says the inventor. - I combined the pleasant with the useful. The product is a response to the promotion of osteoporosis prevention methods and functional foods. This type of food must meet certain conditions: be of natural origin, be enriched with health-promoting ingredients and, of course, resemble traditional food. In this case, simply a bar of chocolate.

It is worth adding that chocolate against osteoporosis has not entered the phase of mass production, but a great career, hopefully, is yet to come.

Especially since osteoporosis is treated with dietary supplements and vitamin D3, among other things.

What does the disease consist of? On the constant loss of bone mass, leading to excessive bone fragility. Its consequences are so-called low-energy fractures, which can be caused by very light trauma or a fall from one's own body.

There are even known cases of osteoporotic fractures following a cough or even a sneeze. Osteoporosis, known as the "silent bone eater," progresses, but it doesn't hurt. It is detected through densitometry, a test of bone density through an X-ray machine.

It is estimated that more than 20 percent of women and more than 6 percent of men over the age of 50 suffer from osteoporosis worldwide. The National Health Fund estimated in 2018 that Poland has more than 2 million people with osteoporosis (three times as many women).

Source: SUM