WASHINGTON — Everyone calm down. It’s only one study, and even one of the authors says you shouldn’t take it too literally. Read all the caveats — please.
All right, here it is: Eating chocolate can be good for your heart. Even lots of it.
A study in the journal Heart says that eating the equivalent of two Hershey’s bars — about 100 grams — of chocolate had a lower risk of heart disease, The Washington Post reports.
Wait! You’re headed to the cabinet right now, aren’t you? Stop.
Phyo Myint, one of the lead authors of the study, told The Washington Post, “The main message is that you don’t need to worry too much if you are only moderately eating chocolate.”
Chocolate is full of flavonoid antioxidants, and can increase the good HDL cholesterol and lower the bad LDL variety.
But while the big sample size — 25,000 — is promising, Myint says that means thousands of people didn’t see any benefits to eating chocolate. Indeed, he said, “some people had worse outcomes.”
Charles Mueller, a professor at New York University, told the Post that cocoa beans have healthy chemicals also found in red peppers, green peppers and broccoli, but “if you are overweight, and you are thinking of protecting yourself by eating chocolate you are being kind of silly,” he said.
