RESEARCH: WHY YOU SHOULD EAT DARK CHOCOLATE.

Dark chocolate is good for you and scientists now know why. Dark chocolate helps restore flexibility to arteries while also preventing white blood cells from sticking to the walls of blood vessels. Both arterial stiffness and white blood cell adhesion are known factors that play a significant role in atherosclerosis. What's more, the scientists also found that increasing the flavanol content of dark chocolate did not change this effect. A study published in the March 2014 issue of The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.(FASEB) Diederik Esser, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Top Institute Food and Nutrition and Wageningen University, Division of Human Nutrition in Wageningen, says the impact of chocolate consumption on vascular health and that increasing flavanol content has no added beneficial effect on vascular health. Diederik Esser noted however, the increased flavanol content clearly affected taste and thereby the motivation to eat these chocolates. So the dark side of chocolate is a healthy one. Esser and colleagues analyzed 44 middle-aged overweight men over two periods of four weeks as they consumed 70 grams of chocolate per day. Study participants received either specially produced dark chocolate with high flavanol content or chocolate that was regularly produced. Both chocolates had a similar cocoa mass content. Before and after both intervention periods, researchers performed a variety of measurements that are important indicators of vascular health. During the study, participants were advised to refrain from certain energy dense food products to prevent weight gain. Scientists also evaluated the sensory properties of the high flavanol chocolate and the regular chocolate and collected the motivation scores of the participants to eat these chocolates during the intervention. This discovery could lead the way to therapies that do the same thing as dark chocolate but with better and more consistent results, but until the 'dark chocolate drug' is developed, however just o make do with what nature has given . Go ahead eat dark chocolate.