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:: Hot Stuff :: I addicted coffee (cafeine) for a while (2-3 years) then a few months ago I quit (broke! can't afford daily venti latte anymore and toasted coconut flavored coffee just got boring) Well, I turned to tea. My favorite is just the regular lipton tea with honey. I drink flavored green tea as well. Though I'm not a BIG fan of hot cocoa, after reading this article, I am considering rotating my tea with hot cocoa for breakfast :) ----------------------------------------------------- From WTOP Health Section: Friday, Nov 21 Hot Cocoa Really Is Good For You Updated: Thursday, Nov. 20, 2003 - 6:46 AM EDT. ITHACA, N.Y. - Enjoy that hot cocoa. What you thought was a guilty indulgence has antioxidants that prevent cancer, Cornell University food scientists say. And when compared with other beverages, researchers found cocoa has nearly twice the antioxidants of red wine and up to three times those found in green tea. The finding will be published Dec. 3 in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, a news release says. Scientists have long known that cocoa contains antioxidants, but no one knew just how plentiful they were compared with those in red wine and green tea. Cocoa has a high content of phenolic phytochemicals, or flavonoids, that indicate the presence of known antioxidants that can stave off cancer, heart disease and other ailments, according to the research by Chang Y. (Cy) Lee, chairman of the Department of Food Science and Technology at Cornell. Lee's team discovered 611 milligrams of the phenolic compound gallic acid equivalents and 564 milligrams of the flavonoid, epicatechin equivalents, in a single serving of cocoa. In a glass of red wine, the researchers found 340 milligrams of gallic acid equivalents and 163 milligrams of epicatechin equivalents. In a cup of green tea, they found 165 milligrams of gallic acid equivalents and 47 milligrams of epicatechin equivalents. "If I had made a prediction before conducting the tests, I would have picked green tea as having the most antioxidant activity," Lee said in a news release. "When we compared one serving of each beverage, the cocoa turned out to be the highest in antioxidant activity, and that was surprising to me." So should you give up green tea or red wine? No. Lee suggests enjoying all three in different parts of the day. "Personally, I would drink hot cocoa in the morning, green tea in the afternoon and a glass of red wine in the evening. That's a good combination," he says. But when it comes to chocolate bars versus cocoa, you may want the cocoa because of the saturated fats in candy bars. Cocoa has about one-third of a gram of fat per one-cup serving, compared with 8 grams of fat in a standard-size 40-gram chocolate bar, researchers say. (Copyright 2003 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)