Good news for chocolate lovers

27 March 2012 – New research suggests that people who eat chocolate regularly tend to be slimmer.

The study, published in Archives of Internal Medicine, looked at 1,000 US people and recorded their diet, calorie intake and body mass index. The results showed that regular consumption was related to a lower BMI.

This link remains despite the fact that people who ate more chocolate did not consume fewer calories overall, or take more exercise. In fact they ate more. The study also suggests that it is how often you eat chocolate that is important, rather than the quantity.

According to the researchers, there is only one chance in a hundred that their findings could be explained by chance alone.

It is believed that certain ingredients in chocolate may encourage weight loss rather than fat synthesis. This is supported by previous studies on rats. Epicatechin, one chemical derived from cocoa, has been shown to increase the number of mitochondria in cells. Mitochondria use up calories. Consequently, epicatechin reduced the weight of rats whose calorie intake and exercise levels were unchanged.

Because of its high saturated fat and calorie content, chocolate is not usually recommended by nutritionists, but this study represents another piece of evidence highlighting the benefits of chocolate, other studies have also linked chocolate to a drop in the risk of heart disease and strokes, a reduction in blood pressure and a cut in the risk of diabetes.