I’ve crawled out of my chocolate-induced coma to bring you
the second annual installment of Chocolate Is Good For You News. This study came out last year,
too late for Valentine’s but in time for Easter. (Do I need to start having an
April edition of CIGFY News to justify my Cadbury egg consumption?) It doesn’t
have anything to do with running or exercise, but it’s chocolate, so I couldn’t
resist. (As is usually the story with me and chocolate.)
In this study, they asked over a thousand people about their
eating and exercise habits, evaluated their BMIs (Body Mass Index, a ratio of
height to weight) and mood, and most importantly asked the age-old question,
“How many times a week do you consume chocolate?” (More than you’d like to
know, Researcher. More than you’d like to know.) As you might expect, they
found that people who ate chocolate more frequently consumed more calories
overall, including more saturated fat, and had higher rates of depression. But they also found that people who ate chocolate more frequently had lower BMIs. (Emphasis is theirs. Even they were so surprised by this that they had
to add italics.) They found no link between chocolate eating and exercising.
What’s really remarkable about this is the issue of
calories. There’s an idea that a calorie is a calorie, meaning that no matter
what you eat, if it adds up to more calories, you’ll gain weight. Of course
that’s overly simplified. Studies show some calories are better or worse than
others: protein has been shown to keep you lean, monunsaturated fat to reduce your risk of heart disease, trans fat to raise your risk. Most people would put
chocolate in the bad calorie column; it’s full of sugar and fat. But this study
suggests it’s not so bad; that a chocolate calorie isn’t just a (delicious!)
calorie. Even though chocolate lovers ate more calories, they were still
thinner. The authors cite other studies that have found chocolate helps
regulate insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. Maybe
these advantages of chocolate offset the sugar and fat. The authors finish by
concluding that a randomized clinical trial of chocolate may be needed. Count
me in!
Unfortunately, the researchers didn’t ask about the type of
chocolate. Dark chocolate gets all the good press and is getting more popular,
but considering the ubiquity of milk chocolate products in our supermarkets, I
can’t imagine these people were eating only dark chocolate. It would have been
interesting if they had included that distinction, especially if it gave some
credit to poor old milk chocolate.
Dream big,
Teal
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