Breaking News: Chocolate is Good For You

It’s many people’s favorite pleasure - but before you go away, taking a bite out of chocolate and feeling guilty, latest research has revealed that eating chocolate is good for you.

Scientists have made a satisfying discovery, saying that eating chocolate in reasonable amounts, makes you feel emotionally better and therefore enhances the smooth running of the body’s natural endorphins. Even protecting you against heart disease!

Chocolate makes you live longer

Researchers at Harvard University in the U.S. studied 8,000 men for 65 years and found that those who ate modest amounts of chocolate up to three times a month, lived almost a year longer than those who didn’t eat any.

They concluded that this is likely to be due to the fact that cocoa contains antioxidants called polyphenols, also found in red wine, which prevent the oxidation of harmful cholesterol.

Did you know that antioxidants are also known to protects us against cancer?

Chocolate is good for stress

This is thought to be because it contains valeric acid, which is a relaxant and tranquilizer.

lso, the sugar in chocolate may reduce stress - sugar has been shown to have a calming and pain-relieving effect on babies and animals because sweet tastes activate the opiate-like substances in our brain.

Chocolate does not make you put on weight

You can’t blame any single food on weight gain. So long as you don’t eat more calories than you burn off, you won’t get fat says nutritionists.

Chocolate can make you more alert
It contains a stimulant called theobromine, a caffeine-like substance that is thought to make us more alert.

But the bromine doesn’t have the side-effect of giving us the jitters, like caffeine, and chocolate contains only minor amounts of caffeine - a mug of coffee has about 85mg compared with just 1mg in three squares of chocolate.