Health – Chocoholics can rejoice

Cologne – Dark chocolate seems to lower blood pressure if eaten in low amount, just a nibble a day, German researchers said on Tuesday.

Prior studies have shown foods rich in cocoa like dark chocolate offer heart benefits, but researchers have worried the added sugar, fat and calories would cancel out any good the chocolate might do.

The new research from Germany adds to mounting evidence linking dark chocolate with health benefits, but it’s the first to suggest that just a tiny – a 30-calorie (0.126 kilojoule) bite of dark chocolate — equivalent to 6.8 grams or a quarter ounce may suffice.

Volunteers for the study ate just over 6 grams of dark chocolate daily for almost five months — one square from a German chocolate bar called Ritter Sport. People who ate that amount ended up with lower blood pressure readings than those who ate white chocolate.

University of Cologne researcher Dr. Dirk Taubert, the study’s lead author, said the blood pressure reductions with dark chocolate were small but still substantial enough to potentially reduce cardiovascular disease risks, although study volunteers weren’t followed long enough to measure that effect.

The research involved just 44 people aged 56 through 73, but the results echo other small studies of cocoa-containing foods. The study was a randomised trial that compared the effects of dark chocolate vs. white chocolate on the blood pressure of forty-four adults (twenty-four women and twenty men) fifty-six to seventy-three years old. Participants consumed either 6.3 grams of dark chocolate (which contained the flavanols) or 5.6 grams of white chocolate (no flavanols) per day for eighteen weeks. Both supplements contributed only thirty calories to their daily intake.

All the subjects exhibited either prehypertension or stage 1 hypertension at the beginning of the study. Otherwise they were all healthy and similar in body weight, blood cholesterol levels, and other health indices. After consuming the chocolate supplements for eighteen weeks, the people in the dark chocolate group had lowered both their systolic (the upper number) and diastolic blood pressure significantly. Further, they also increased plasma levels of compounds thought to contribute to arterial dilation — which could explain the decrease in blood pressure. None of these effects were seen in the group who ate the white chocolate.

As the authors note, “adoption of small amounts of flavanol-rich cocoa into the habitual diet is a dietary modification that is easy to adhere to and therefore may be a promising behavioural approach to lower blood pressure in individuals with above-optimal blood pressure.” In addition, if the study is replicated and its results confirmed, it supports the idea that there truly are no good or bad foods — even chocolate, when properly used, can provide health benefits.

The study appears today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. It was funded by University Hospital in Cologne.