Great news for chocolate lovers: Two new studies show that those who regularly eat chocolate, especially dark chocolate, have a significantly lower risk of heart attack and stroke.
The first, a British study from Cambridge and published in the British Medical Journal, shows that those who eat the most chocolate have a 37% lower risk of heart disease and a 29% lower risk of stroke.
What’s more, the study says that chocolate eaters have a surprisingly lower risk of cardio-metabolic disorders. That’s a fancy way of including diabetes and metabolic syndrome in the mix, both disease conditions that are triggered by excessive sugar and fat consumption and obesity.
The second study, which looked at dark chocolate consumption among more than 14,000 adults in Jordan, found at those who ate four dark chocolate bars a week had substantially lower blood pressure, even among those with a family history of high blood pressure.
High blood pressure is a major cause of heart attack and stroke, so the Jordanian study validates the British study in its finding that chocolate consumption can prevent these potentially deadly diseases.
Researchers theorize that the wealth of antioxidants found in chocolate is responsible for these happy results.
CAUTION: This does not mean it’s OK hog out on chocolate. Chocolate has a high sugar and fat content. A 1.5-ounce milk chocolate mini-bar (think or it as a two-biter) has 235 calories and 13 grams of fat. Dark chocolate is a better choice: It’s about 20% lower in calories and fat, but chocolate in any form cannot in any way be considered a diet food.
Moderation is still the key. An ounce a day should be more than sufficient and I think the Jordanians who chow down four chocolate bars a week may have lower blood pressure, but they are almost surely fatter.
My regular readers know that I have recently shed more than 100 pounds of unwanted fat. Chocolate has absolutely not been part of my regular eating program. However, now that I am phasing off the diet, I think there is reason to add a couple of ounces of dark dark chocolate to my diet each week and the addition of 200 to 300 calories on a weekly basis is a worthy investment for the health return I can get from it. (Oh yes, and there’s the element of pleasure, too. Chocolate stimulates the cannabinoid receptors in the brain, producing a feeling of well-being.)
That “dark dark” chocolate was not a typo. If you’re a chocolate lover as I am, you’ll discover that really dark chocolate (60% cocoa or more) is much more satisfying than milk chocolate, so an ounce or so is sufficient. I know the milk chocolate and its high sugar content triggers sugar cravings for me and probably for many others, leading to taking in hundreds of unwanted and unneeded calories.
My neighbor likes to call her nightly Dove dark chocolate habit her ”heart medicine.” It turns out, she’s right!
