Dark Chocolate Melts My Heart

Dark chocolate has got to be the finest food on earth. Unlike its sweeter cousins milk chocolate and white chocolate, dark gets its oh-so-bittersweetness because it’s made from at least 70 percent cocoa powder. And now—thanks to a few chocoholics who couldn’t stand to give up their favorite treat while taking part in a heart study—researchers have found that just a few squares a day of the dark stuff can halve the risk of heart attack.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve read this already, you say. And it’s true: since the 80s, researchers have known that the “flavonoids” in dark chocolate can reduce blood pressure. But previous studies had only used massive amounts of flavonoids—equivalent to gobbling up several pounds of chocolate per day (which actually might not be all that improbable…..)

Anyway, this new study, released Tuesday at the American Heart Association conference in Chicago, studied the effects of smaller, everyday doses of chocolate. Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health used 139 people who had been disqualified from a much larger study about the effects of aspirin on blood platelets. The larger study had required its subjects to stick to a strict regimen of exercise and a modified diet that did not include caffeine. But these 139 just couldn’t keep their hands off of one caffeinated treat—chocolate.

Though these people had to be disqualified from the larger aspirin study, the researchers looked at their blood results anyway, and found a big surprise: even a little bit of chocolate reduces the time it takes for blood to clot in narrow arteries. But before you reach for the Hershey’s, there’s of course a but: This beneficial effect comes from chocolate’s cocoa, not its (equally tasty) butter or the sugar. So how much can we have? The researchers recommend about 2 tablespoons a day—but only of the dark stuff. Mmmmm.