Singapore Reporter

Dark chocolate is good for health, says a novel research. Having 70 grams of dark chocolate everyday will increase vascular health of people.

It will restore flexibility to arteries and will also prevent white cells sticking to the walls of blood vessels. Diederik Esser, one of the researchers, involved in the project from the Top Institute Food and Nutrition said increasing flavanol content of dark chocolate do not change this effect.

“We provide a more complete picture of the impact of chocolate consumption in vascular health and show that increasing flavanol content has no added beneficial effect on vascular health”, said Esser.

An experiment was carried out on 44 middle-aged overweight men for over two weeks of four weeks. Study participants were either provided with specially produced dark chocolate having high flavanol content or normal chocolate.

They were asked to have 70 grams of chocolate. Different measurements that act as important indicators of vascular health were carried out before and after having the chocolate.

During the study, participants were asked to avoid having certain energy dense food products to avoid weight gain. Some other things evaluated by researchers were the sensory properties of high flavanol chocolate and normal chocolate.

Motivation score of the participants to have these chocolates during the intervention periods. Gerald Weissmann, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, said dark chocolate allows people to have it with less guilt. But it also can help in coming up with therapies that do the same job as drak chocolate with better results. The study has been published in The FASEB Journal.