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Weight Reduction Activity of Cocoa Powder in Obese Mice.

Jayeola CO, Oluwadun A, Olubamiwa O, Deji Agboola, and Effedua HI

Obesity and overweight have in the last decade become a global health problem - according to the World Health Organization (WHO) back in 2005 approximately 1.6 billion adults over the age of 15+ were overweight, at least 400 million adults were obese and at least 20 million children under the age of 5 years were overweight. Experts believe if the current trends continue by 2015 approximately 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese. The scale of the obesity problem has a number of serious health consequences for individuals and government systems. This study was conducted to determine the anti -obese activity of cocoa powder through the use of mouse model. Natural cocoa powder was included in the composition of mouse feed. The cocoa feed was fed to group of obese mice, normal /un-obese mice and compared with their counterpart using normal mice feed over a period of two weeks. The mean percentage weight reduction was more pronounced in the obese mice when the weight reduction was compared with the normal mice. Mice weight of 17.60+1.27g before administration of cocoa, 16.65 + 1.63g after first week of treatment and 15.60+0.00g after second week of treatment showed constant reduction on the weight of mouse fed with cocoa powder. This is an indication that there was systematic decline in weight of mice after being fed with cocoa for a period of two weeks; this demonstrated that cocoa may contain some weight trimming ingredients.