People who ate chocolate a few times a week or more weighed less
than those who rarely indulged, according to a U.S. study
involving a thousand people. Researchers said the findings,
published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, don't prove that
adding a candy bar to your daily diet will help you shed pounds.
Nor did the total amount of chocolate consumed have an impact.
But the researchers, led by Beatrice Golomb, from the University
of California San Diego, said it was possible that antioxidants
in chocolate could be behind health benefits including lower
blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as decreased body
weight. "People have just assumed that because it comes with
calories and it's typically eaten as a sweet, therefore it would
inherently have been one way, bad," said Golomb. She and her
colleagues used data from a study on cholesterol-lowering drugs
that surveyed 1,000 healthy adults on typical eating habits,
including how often they ate chocolate. The participants, who
ranged from 20 to 85 years