Good news for chocolate lovers! Eating chocolate could reduce blood pressure and heart disease risk, according to a new study.
Researchers measured the dietary intake, including chocolate, and blood pressure of nearly 20,000 participants in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer trial, followed up for a mean of eight years.
Those who ate the most chocolate -- an average of 7.5g a day -- had significantly lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure than those with the lowest chocolate consumption of an average of 1.7g a day -- a difference of 1.0mmHg systolic and 0.9mmHg diastolic.
This was the equivalent of a 39 percent lower risk of having a heart attack or stroke compared to those who ate the least amount of chocolate. The difference between the two groups amounts to six grams of chocolate: the equivalent of less than one small square of a 100g bar.
Study leader Dr. Brian Buijsse, a nutritional epidemiologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition, said: "To put it in terms of absolute risk, if people in the group eating the lowest amount of chocolate increased their chocolate intake by 6g a day, 85 fewer heart attacks and strokes per 10,000 people could be expected to occur over a period of about 10 years."
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