Welcome! This site can be easily viewed with a PDA or a mobile phone. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

You’ll find this interesting if you haven’t heard of it before.

It would appear that eating some dark plain chocolate every day could help prevent heart disease. According to a team of researchers in Switzerland, the antioxidants contained in a bar of chocolate can help keep veins from becoming narrower. (Or is this just a cunning way to advertise Swiss chocolate?).

A test was carried out on a group of 20 volunteers who were smokers and who disclosed no health problems. They were requested not to eat anti-oxidant rich food such as Apples, Cabbage, and Onions, but instead eat 40g of chocolate. Each volunteer was given a different type of chocolate to identify which performed best.

Two hours after eating the chocolate, results showed that black chocolate with a cocoa content percentage of a least 74%, improved blood flow quite significantly. Another benefit that was discovered, was that the risk of a vein blockage was decreased by about 50%. However white chocolate did not achieve the same results. It appears that dark chocolate contained more antioxidants per gram than the remaining chocolate types tested.

Whether this advantage outweighs the disadvantages of the very high fat and glucose content generally found in chocolate which can cause weight problems, remains to be seen.

If you’re into chocolate, probably the best course of action is a moderate chocolate intake switching to plain dark chocolate from other types were possible.