Chocolate may be loaded with calories, but it also may be good for your heart if it’s eaten in moderation and is also of high quality, new research suggests.
Researchers in Boston examined data from a nine-year study of 31,823 women in Sweden to determine the effect of eating chocolate on heart disease and found that eating some of the sweet stuff may reduce the risk of heart failure.
The key findings:
Women who ate an average of one to two servings of high-quality chocolate per week had a 32% lower risk of developing heart failure.
Women who had one to three servings per month had a 26% reduced risk.
But women who ate at least one serving daily did not appear to benefit from a protective effect, probably due to the additional calories gained from eating chocolate instead of more nutritious foods, Murray Mittleman, MD, DrPH, of Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, says in a news release.
“You can’t ignore that chocolate is a relatively calorie-dense food and large amounts of habitual consumption is going to raise your risk for weight gain,” he says. “But if you’re going to have a treat, dark chocolate is probably a good choice, as long as it’s in moderation.”
High concentrations of compounds in chocolate called flavonoids may lower blood pressure, short-term studies have shown. But Mittleman, director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess, says the new study is the first to show long-term outcomes related specifically to heart failure, which can result from untreated high blood pressure over time.
The scientists studied self-reported chocolate eating tendencies of participants between the ages of 48 and 83 who were taking part in a long-term research project called the Swedish Mammography Cohort.