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There’s not a woman in the nation who needs convincing that chocolate’s good for you, and some men will eat to that as well.

And indeed, research suggests that dark chocolate in small quantities might be okay, and white chocolate, I’m glad to say – since it’s revolting – isn’t.

Dark chocolate can contain blood pressure-reducing polyphenols, but if you’ve got to eat bars and bars of the stuff to get the effect, your clogged arteries and obesity might get you first.

A small, 18-week study of men and women aged between 55 and 75 randomly allocated them to a 6 gram piece (or 30 calories) a day, of either polyphenol-free white or polyphenol-full dark chocolate.

The participants were threatened with expulsion from this incredible indulgence if they let on to the researchers whether they were on the dark side.

The results from this preliminary study were that those on a piece of dark chocolate a day lowered their blood pressure by two or three points on average, with no changes to their cholesterol or blood sugar.

The effect, if it was real, was probably through relaxing the arteries.

It’s enough of a difference to lower your chances of dying prematurely by 5 per cent, and hey – even if you do die, it’ll be with a brown smile on your face.

For Reference

Title: Journal of the American Medical Association
Author: Taubert D et al. Effects of low habitual cocoa intake in blood pressure and bioactive nitric oxide. A randomized controlled trial.
URL: http://jama.ama-assn.org/
2007;298:49-60

Tags: dark chocolate, why is chocolate good for you

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 6:02 am and is filed under Daily Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.