Lately it seems almost every chocolate product on the market has come out with a dark chocolate version. Now probably the chocolate manufacturers were just looking to create some brand extension but what they didn’t know was – a new healthy snack was born. The cocoa bean like the coffee bean comes from a plant.
An antioxidant called flavonoids is what makes dark chocolate so helpful to your body. Antioxidants help your systems stay healthy by reducing the number of free radicals moving around in your body. Normally, the body can deal free radicals, but if antioxidants are unavailable, or if an abundance of free-radical are produced due to such things as stress or excesssive sun exposure cell damage occurs. Dark chocolate has an unusually high level of antioxidants.
A Swiss study involving cardiac patients aged 45 to 70 over a two year period, monitored chocolate consumption over ten years. Researchers said that data indicated patients consuming a few ounces of chocolate twice a week or more were 66 percent less likely to die from cardiac disease than non-eaters. Once a week cut risk by almost half, even once a month or less – cut the risk by 27 percent.
