Sweet dreams: eating chocolate prevents heart disease

If you’re a chocoholic, the news out of England is tantalizing: middle-aged and older adults who eat up to 3.5 ounces of chocolate a day (that’s more than two standard Hershey bars) seem to have lower rates of heart disease than those who spurn chocolate. At least that was the conclusion of a study that followed the health of nearly 21,000 resident of Norfolk, England, for 11 years. Among those in the top tier of chocolate consumption, 12% developed or died of cardiovascular disease during the study, compared to 17.4% of those who didn’t eat chocolate. The results were published online in the medical journal Heart. Desire vs. evidence I’m a chocolate lover. My new favorite is an ice cream called Chocolate Therapy. The name doesn’t feel like a stretch, given the results of this study and many before it that have linked eating chocolate to a lower risk of heart disease. Much as I’d like to believe in that connection, and get to work on my own personal Chocolate Therapy, we don’t yet know enough to put eating chocolate on a par with eating fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. All of the large studies, including the one from Norfolk, are observational studies. That means the researchers asked questions about the participants eating habits, tracked their health, and made statistical connections. These kinds of studies can generate important insights. But they can’t prove cause and effect. It takes a randomized trial to do that. It&#...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Healthy Eating Heart Health chocolate cocoa flavonoids Source Type: news