Heart Disease Risks Reduced by Eating Dark Chocolate

Last week, I brought you the story that eating pistachio nuts lowers the risks of heart disease. Raise your hand if you went out and bought a 5lb bag of pistachios after reading my post. Excellent!

This week, I bring you the news that eating dark chocolate can lower the risks of coronary heart disease as well. Before you get too excited and go to Costco or WalMart and stock up on the dark chocolate- please note that it is a very small amount of dark chocolate that helps.

From the heart disease study:

The ideal amount is 6.7 grams per day (0.23 ounces). A typical Hershey chocolate bar weighs about 43 grams. That means eating one dark chocolate bar over the course of 6 1/2 days to get 6.7 grams per day.

Ok, so buy a dark chocolate bar and divide it into sevenths- probably one "square" that you can break off.

This heart disease study was done in Italy. Italy seems to come out with plenty of studies on heart disease. They also came out with a study showing the benefits of fish oil for heart failure.

They studied 4,849 people in good health and discovered that the ones who ate dark chocolate had significantly lower amounts of C-reactive protein in their blood. Many studies like this one show that low levels of C-reactive protein means lower levels of inflammation which means lower risks of heart disease.

The study also notes that milk chocolate does NOT offer the same benefits, so make sure it is dark chocolate(probably because of the antioxidants from the cocoa) that you are eating.

Now that we know that pistachios and dark chocolate can lower the risks of heart disease, I think we should combine them together and market them as some type of healthy snack- oops, looks like somebody beat me to the punch.