Chocolates and Cardiovascular Health (Photo : Twitter/@RT_com)
Consuming up to 100 grams of chocolate daily is associated to reduced risk of having heart disease and cerebrovascular accident (stroke), research says.
The researchers in England conducted an EPIC-Norfolk trial, which involved 25,000 men and women as study participants, as per Science Daily. The trial aimed to determine the effect of diet on the long term health of the subjects. Study materials included food frequency and lifestyle questionnaires.
The subjects were monitored for an average of just about 12 years. During the course of the follow-up phase, 3,013 participants suffered from either an incident of irrepressible or non-serious coronary heart disease or stroke.
Based from the study findings, one out of five or about 20 percent of the participants disclosed that they did not eat chocolate. The remaining 80 percent of the subjects revealed that they ate seven to 100 grams of chocolate daily.
The study results also showed that subjects who had higher consumption of chocolate had an 11 percent lesser risk of having cardiovascular diseases and a 25 percent lesser risk of concomitant mortality. Also, those who eat chocolate daily had an 18 percent lower risk of having inflammatory protein in the bloodstream.
International published evidence regarding the association between chocolate and cardiovascular disease was methodically reviewed by the investigators. Aside from the data coming from the EPIC trial participants, the related literature involved data of approximately 158,000 people.
While dark chocolates are believed to be healthier than the white ones, the study also revealed that milk chocolate was more frequently consumed by the EPIC-Norfolk participants, according to Washington Post. This data suggests that both dark and milk chocolates provide health benefits.
