Is Chocolate Healthy? Study Reveals Health Benefits of Eating One Chocolate Bar a Week
When one asks people what their guilty pleasures are, eating chocolate will most likely be one of them. That's because chocolate is included in the category of sweet and fatty foods that are not recommended to people with hypertension or those who are at risk of heart disease.
But past studies have found that eating chocolate actually lowers the risk of heart attacks and heart failure. Dark chocolate is more effective as it contains more flavonoids or natural antioxidants found in cocoa that reduce blood pressure, cholesterol and inflammation.
This conclusion is boosted by a new paper titled the "Danish Diet, Cancer and Health Study" which monitored the diet of 55,000 people aged 50–64 in Denmark. Researchers began collecting data from 1993 to 1997. The diet data were since linked to Denmark's national health registry.
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The goal was to see who was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AFib). This is also known as "heart flutter," which causes the heart to beat quickly and irregularly, thereby increasing the chance of a stroke or a heart attack. At least 2.7 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with AFib, according to the American Heart Association.
The long-term study revealed that chocolate reduces the risk of abnormal heart rhythm by 21 percent. There are limits, though. For women, the optimal chocolate consumption should only be one 30-gram bar per week. The benefits decrease if they eat more than that.
The chocolate diet is best suited for men, it turns out, as the risk drops to 23 percent if they eat 30 grams of chocolate two to six times a week. "I think our message here is that moderate chocolate intake as part of a healthy diet is an option," lead author Elizabeth Mostofsky said.
However, the study result was challenged by Dr. Gavin Sandercock, director of research in sport and exercise science at the University of Essex. He noted that it is pointless to compare participants with the lowest chocolate consumption to other groups considering they already have heart disease.
For him, chocolate wasn't a factor in reducing heart flutter as the chocolate eaters were already healthy. "In short, (the non-chocolate eaters) were the unhealthiest group in the whole study – which means that almost any other group will seem healthier than them," Dr. Sndercock said.
