Dark chocolate great in small doses

Dark chocolate in small doses a day could be the answer to controlling a number of serious diseases according to recent German research.

Dr Dirk Taubert and his colleagues at the University Hospital in Cologne found that even a small amount of dark chocolate reduced the risk of stroke by 8%, the risk of heart disease by 5%, and other causes of death by 4%.

They found that eating just 125 kilojoules of dark chocolate a day could lower blood pressure while at the same time avoiding weight gain or other unhealthy side-effects.

Links between cocoa and blood pressure had been established before but the earlier research had concentrated on high amounts of chocolate which offset any benefits with increased sugar, fat, and calories intake.

But the research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association did not give the same approval rating to white chocolate, which was demonstrated to have nothing like the same positive effect as its dark chocolate rival.