Saturday, July 15, 2006

The health benefits of chocolate


Is chocolate an essential component of a balanced diet?

According to this piece from Clevelandclinic, it has health benefits, more specifically it benefits a healthy heart.

They say that it contains chemicals called flavinoids which are found in a wide array of foods and beverages, such as cranberries, apples, peanuts, chocolate, onions, tea and red wine.

To date, dark chocolate appears to retain the highest level of flavonoids. So your best bet is to choose dark chocolate over milk chocolate.

It looks like the old adage of "everything in moderation" holds. But if you can't resist chocolate, at least stick to dark. It's higher in cocoa than milk chocolate and helps to increase levels of HDL, a type of cholesterol that helps prevent fat clogging up arteries.

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