Chocolate's Benefit to Health

Yale University Associate Professor Dr. David Katz recently tested the blood pressure of 45 adults before and after eating dark chocolate. The results were impressive: just two hours after eating dark chocolate the subjects' blood pressure dropped and their blood flow improved. "This clearly suggests that dark chocolate isn't just good; it's good for you," Dr. Katz said of his 2005 study, one of more than the 20 conducted in the past decade on the health value of cocoa and chocolate.


While more research is needed to determine the long-term effects on people with high blood pressure, the research on cocoa and chocolate is accumulating quickly. Recent research shows that dark chocolate and cocoa may :

· Help your arteries relax and widen, lowering blood pressure, promoting good blood flow and reducing the strain on the heart.

· Help prevent the build-up of plaque that can block arteries

· Have mild anti-blood clotting effects.

The results, published in 2006, were also stunning. The researchers divided a group of 470 elderly men according to how much cocoa-containing food they consumed and tracked them over 15 years. The men who consumed the most cocoa-containing products, the researchers discovered, were half as likely to die from cardiovascular disease as those who consumed the least. In addition, they were half as likely to die from any cause as those who ate the least cocoa-or chocolate-containing foods.