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Dark Chocolate: Nice - and not at all naughty

16 January 2008

Imagine this: your doctor takes your blood pressure, finds it's a bit on the high side and, rather than reaching for the prescription pad, tells you to go to the candy store and binge on chocolate. Ridiculous? Not according to Italian doctors, who recently tested the effects of chocolate on people with mildly elevated blood pressure. In their randomized clinical trial, they found that eating an entire 100-g bar of dark chocolate (but not white chocolate) every day dramatically reduced blood pressure (BP). Systolic BP plummeted by an average of 11.9 mmHg, and diastolic BP by 8.5 mmHg-making chocolate as effective as many of the high-blood-pressure drugs currently on the market (Hypertension, 2005; 46: 398-405).

Recently, doctors at the University of Cologne in Germany repeated the trial, this time using considerably smaller amounts of chocolate (just 6.3 g), but even this had measurable benefits. In this case, BP was reduced by almost 3 mmHg, a small-but nevertheless signifi...

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