Dark chocolate is really good for your health

Good news for foodies: Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the magazine Epsilon us by the benefits of dark chocolate.

franceinfo: AWhen boxes of chocolate start to tempt us, this study shows that dark chocolate is really good for your health?

Mathilde Fontez : Yes, here we go! You can fall for the boxes of Christmas chocolates. Dark chocolate reduces blood pressure, protects our cells from oxidation and inflammation, and improves glucose metabolism. So much so that it significantly reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes, this type of diabetes which is most often linked to obesity or a sedentary lifestyle.

Yes ! A fatty and delicious food that fights diabetes: it’s possible. It is a team of researchers from Harvard and the University of Shanghai who say this, in a study which has just been published, based on the monitoring of nearly 200,000 people for 10 years, even 20 years; for some participants.

Does the study have the merit of taking a step back?

Yes, it confirms in large numbers, and over time, the conclusions of other work carried out over the last 10 years on chocolate. For example, one study suggested that 2 servings of chocolate per week reduce the risk of diabetes by 17%. Another said that by eating it 4 times a week, you reduce the risk by 19%. And she sorts out the effects between dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate.

Milk chocolate is not as beneficial?

No, we could have suspected that. Neither milk chocolate nor white chocolate reduces the risk of diabetes. On the contrary, they tend to make us gain weight, pbecause they are much sweeter than dark chocolate, and because they contain less cocoa. Milk chocolate contains 35%, compared to more than 50% for dark chocolate. And white chocolate doesn’t contain any cocoa at all.

Which confirms that it is a substance in cocoa which would cause its beneficial effects: probably compounds called flavonols: dark chocolate is one of the foods which contains the most – even if they are also found in tea, or in apples. We don’t understand at all exactly how flavonols work, it still remains a mystery. But it works. So itchocolate for everyone! But especially dark chocolate…