Good — and delicious — news for chocolate lovers: Eating more chocolate appears to lower your risk of heart attacks and stroke.
I know; the findings seem too sweet to be true. And there was a bogus "study" a few months ago that claimed chocolate could lead to weight loss.
This is different.
The new study appeared in Heart, a well-respected, peer-reviewed journal, and drew on the experiences of 21,000 adults participating in the EPIC-Norfolk study, which is tracking connections between diet and long-term health.
Researchers from the University of Aberdeen found that participants who ate up to 100 g of chocolate per day — basically, two Hershey's bars — had an 11% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 25% lower risk of associated death compared to participants who didn't eat chocolate.
Sweet indulgence: Model Alyssa Miller enjoys a chocolate bar. (Jason DeCrow/Invision for MAGNUM/AP... [+]
That's not totally surprising; several previous studies have linked eating dark chocolate with improved heart health.
But researchers found that the benefits extended when participants regularly ate milk chocolate, too.
"Milk chocolate was more frequently consumed than dark chocolate in this cohort," the authors write. "However, we still observed a reduced risk of [cardiovascular disease]."
The researchers also conducted a larger review of eight other studies, which found an even bigger link between eating chocolate and having a healthier heart: Participants who ate the most chocolate had a 25% lower risk of any episode of cardiovascular disease and a 45% lower risk of associated death.
There's potential for bias. First, the findings were largely based on questionnaires, so it's possible that participants didn't accurately report what they'd eaten. And as an observational study, there's no clear cause-and-effect.
It's also possible that the people most at risk for heart problems were consciously avoiding chocolate, the study authors note — a sort-of reverse causation. Many of the participants who ate the most chocolate were young adults who were already at low risk for heart disease.
So the study shouldn't be taken as license to stuff yourself with Hershey's bars.
"Some people had worse outcomes when eating that amount of chocolate so the findings need to be taken with extreme caution," study author Phyo Myint told the Washington Post.
But the study does add to the growing evidence that chocolate is good for your heart, Dr. Mark Urman, a preventive cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, told HealthDay.
"[W]e still don't know for sure what specific part of chocolate, or parts of what's in chocolate, may be creating a benefit for heart health," he cautioned. For instance, it could be the flavonoids in chocolate — the antioxidants thought to have anti-inflammatory properties — or it could be chocolate's fatty acids. Myint suggested that the nuts in many chocolate bars could have helpful properties, too.
A few critics thought the study had more sugar than substance. The researchers' findings "comes with more caveats than Almond Joy has nuts," Christopher Wanjek cautions at LiveScience. He points out that the benefits of eating chocolate may be relatively small, when considering the study population and the lack of obvious cause-and-effect.
Still, the study authors believe there's a clear message from their study. And it should be palatable to any chocolate-lover.
"Cumulative evidence suggests that higher chocolate intake is associated with a lower risk of future cardiovascular events," they conclude.
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