Chocolate Shake and Blueberry Pie...... or why Your Liver Would Love it

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” proclaimednobody less than Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek philosopher anddoctor about 460 B.C. And indeed, the daily food intake is themost important exchange of our organism with the environment.Today, we know that the choice of comestible goods is an importantcontributor to our well-being and that the targeted use of specificnutrients and other bioactive molecules (e.g. secondary plant products)significantly helps in the regulation of metabolic processes ina variety of situations of particular requirements. However, next toa health protective diet, identifying the chemical compounds of ahealthy natural food product allows us to characterize those compoundsthat are potential candidates for a new drug, and manufacturingit artificially, we can then change its structure in several differentways to see if we can improve its effectiveness or gain newinsights as to how to design a more effective drug of a similar type.Chronic liver diseases are the fifth most frequent cause of death inthe European Union, mostly caused by chronic alcohol abuse orvirus hepatitides. Liver fibrosis, and ultimately liver cirrhosis, isthe common end-stage of all chronic liver diseases. As chronic liverdiseases entail multiple risks, such as portal hypertension, ascites,hepatic encephalopathy and, of course, hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC), pharmaceutical intervention at the stage of fibrogenesistherefore remains a major task in today’s medicine. This review focusseson established components of Western food, such as Curry,Coffee or Chocolate, in terms of their hepatoprotective effects anddiscusses the biochemical background of the epidemiological observations.It hopefully triggers both, motivation and curiosity, to opena new discussion on the future of the pharmacological treatment ofchronic liver diseases and on the development of drugs based onnatural compounds.