Do you adore eating chocolate? If you are like a lot of people in the UK the answer will be yes! We spend around £3 billion each year on half a million tons of chocolate, and a lot of time afterwards feeling guilty about indulging ourselves. With Easter just around the corner, many people have already started to shop for chocolate eggs and novelties, and concerns about expanding waistlines are being put on hold until after the holiday.
In current times, we have come to see chocolate as a junk food, full of fat and sugar. However recent studies have shown that consumption of dark chocolate containing at least 70% cocoa can have significant health benefits, including:
o Reducing blood pressure
o Controlling diabetes
"Dark chocolate lowers high blood pressure", says Dirk Taubert, MD, PhD, of the University of Cologne, Germany.
In his recent study, six men and seven women aged 55-64 were used. They had recently been diagnosed with mild high blood pressure with an average reading of 153/84.
Each day for a fortnight, they consumed a 100 gram chocolate bar. They were asked to balance its 480 calories by omitting other foods similar in nutrients and calories. Half the patients got dark chocolate and half got milk chocolate.Those who ate dark chocolate had a significant drop in blood pressure (by an average of 5 points for systolic, and 2 points for diastolic blood pressure). Those who ate milk chocolate did not.
"Our findings indicate that milk may interfere with the absorption of antioxidants from chocolate ... and may therefore negate the potential health benefits that can be derived from eating moderate amounts of dark chocolate," reports Dr Mauro Serafini, of Italy's National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research in Rome.
The health benefits of dark chocolate come from polyphenols found naturally in the cocoa bean. These destroy free radicals, destructive molecules that contribute to heart disease and other ailments according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. There are more polyphenols found in the cocoa bean than there are in broccoli or green tea. In a similar but smaller study, a team from the University of L'Aquila found that the body's ability to metabolize sugar was improved - a significant finding for people with diabetes.
Diabetes UK care adviser Amanda Vezey said that although the study was small, it was still interesting.
"People with diabetes can eat dark chocolate like everyone else in moderation.
"However, we would still recommend a balanced low fat, salt and sugar diet that includes starchy carbohydrates and plenty of fruit and vegetables combined with regular exercise to help people with diabetes control their condition."
Professor Graham MacGregor, chairman of the Blood Pressure Association, said more research was needed before conclusions could be made.
But he added: "The benefits of eating chocolate are likely to be outweighed by the disadvantages as chocolate is high in sugar and fat."
And lead researcher Dr Claudio Ferri agrees with this.
"People who want to add some chocolate to their diet need to subtract an equivalent amount of calories by cutting back on other foods to avoid weight gain."
Nutrition expert Cesar Fraga, of the University of California , said the findings on blood pressure seemed credible, but added that there are plenty of other foods with fewer calories that have these benefits, including cherries, apples apricots and purple grapes.
It seems that moderation is the key, so don't go overboard on those Easter Eggs!
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