With Valentine’s Day just round the corner, many of us look forward, in content expectation, to the conventional gifts of chocolate. In my book, chocolate is one of the most delicious of treats, with no regard for the calories. When you try to walk the straight and narrow trail of healthful diet habits, there does come a point where you’ve got to make an exception or two, for the pure delight in the taste. Well, now we’ve got some systematic information to support the consumption of chocolate, especially the cocoa it contains, as a heart sensible food. Goodnews for chocolate lovers generally and folks who love chocolate and have concerns for their heart conditions.

The cocoa in chocolate has been proven to be a satisfactory heart treatment! In a recent Spanish study of older patients, who either had existing heart conditions or were at risk of developing heart issues, half of the players were instructed to incorporate about one oz of unsweetened cocoa powder, sweetened to taste with skim milk in their regular diet in order to ensure optimum healthy heart. The control group drank the skim milk, but without the cocoa.

One month of this avant garde heart treatment revealed that those that consumed the cocoa showed reduced amounts of what are called ‘adhesion molecules’, one of the vital signatures of developing atherosclerosis. These ‘adhesion molecules’ are specific types of proteins which make a contribution to blocking of the arteries, AKA atherosclerotic plaque. This plaque raises your possibility of coronary disease. It must be discussed the average age of the participators in the study was seventy and included folk with diabetes and at least 3 other important risk factors for coronary disease. Among the chance factors were raised blood pressure, obesity, exaggerated levels of LDL joined with low levels of HDL cholesterol, a smoking habit and a family history of coronary disease.

The only restrictions applied by the researchers to the partakers normal diet was the only cocoa they consumed was that one oz of unsweetened cocoa and that no further nutritional supplements be consumed. Shockingly, those patients who were in the cocoa group also demonstrated a rise in their HDL ( good ) cholesterol and a cut back in the LDL ( bad ) cholesterol readings.

The cocoa heart treatment also manifested its positive results apropos anti inflammatory and antioxidant qualities. Before this research, it had been made public that chocolate contains anti-inflammatory agents called polyphenols, which help cut your probability of coronary disease.

Different sources of polyphenols include coffee, tea, wine and produce. So, who’d have thought that 2 cups of cocoa daily might qualify as a legalized heart treatment? Now, go fix yourself a cup of this pleasing heart treatment and tuck yourself in for a good night’s sleep!

Extracting oils from olives using a press is one of the oldest ways to make olive oil, dating back over hundreds of years to the ancient Greeks. A simple process that is undergone using an olive press. But before the press is used there are certain processes that must be undergone first. Once pressed the liquid is put into a decanter so that the liquids can be separated. Let us take a closer look at the complete process:

First of all the olives should be harvested and the bad olives removed from the bunch. The olives are then put under a special stone called millstone or in some areas a ground stone. The olives should stay under the stone for just over a half an hour to turn them into a paste, also to guarantee that the paste collects the right aromas and smell that come from the fruit enzymes and forms into the olive oil drops.

After the necessary time the olive paste is removed from the millstones or ground stones and put onto special disks called fiber disks. The paste must be spread over the disks and completely cover it. They are then placed into the press, piled on top of each other. The machine will then press the paste and begin to compact it so the oils will start to percolate. So the percolation is easier water is poured down the sides of the press.

After the pressing process is over the liquids are removed from the presser and taken to a separate machine called a decanter. The decanter is used to remove the excess water from the olive oil, leaving a pure olive oil. There is another process that can be used to separate the water from the oils, it is called vertical centrifuge and is normally a lot faster than using a decanter.

Every time the process of extracting oil from the olives all of the machines must be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. This is because any paste or oils left on the machines can ferment and therefore contaminate any new oils that will be done in the future. After the cleaning is finished, a final inspection will take place to make sure they are fully disinfected.

Using this traditional method of making olive oil has some advantages, these include that the olives are very well ground and easily pomaced. But the complication at the time of cleaning, the hours of extra manual labor and the time it takes to wait after the harvesting to the time of pressing the olives to make the oil can be classed as disadvantages when using this method, and because of this people have invented other methods that save time.