A sweet-heart of a deal
Sometimes I think that if I learned something seriously negative about chocolate, they’d have to pry it out of my cold dead hand before I’d relinquish it. Luckily, the evidence doesn’t provide opportunity for such drastic measures, and I believe in sharing the wealth when it comes to the benefits I continue to hear about moderate indulgence of this ever-popular treat.
Now, let me preface this with something you’ve heard me say before: Not all chocolate is created equal. If you want to reap health benefits, avoid milk chocolate and stick to high-quality dark chocolate –the higher the cocoa content, the better.
Those folks over at Harvard decided to examine some studies on cocoa (the base for chocolate)—136 studies to be exact—and they found that it gives heart health a boost. What they concluded after looking at these studies was that cocoa could increase blood flow, reduce the stickiness of platelets, and improve “bad” LDL cholesterol. Accolades go to the antioxidants known as flavonoids in cocoa, which have been found to prevent cell damage and inflammation—a nasty condition underlying a lot of diseases.
Chocolate can also help with hypertension. People who ate dark chocolate every day for two weeks straight had a corresponding drop in their blood pressure. There was also a decrease in their “bad” LDL cholesterol. For those who ate white chocolate, they did not reap the same benefit, because it has no cocoa and therefore, no flavonoids.
So before you start jumping up and down and thinking that this is your ticket to behave like a kid in a candy store, I’m going to ask you to slow down. Help yourself, but keep overindulgence in check so you don’t lose the health benefits by gaining excess weight, which will not make your heart happy.
