When it comes to chocolate, you might just be able to have your sweet and eat it, too.
That's what researchers report in the first study to balance all of the known health benefits and harms of chocolate. Publishing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Dr. Beatrice Golomb and her colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, say that the sweet's extra calories may be more than offset by its positive effect on other conditions, such as heart disease, blood pressure and glucose control.
Most notably, the team found that people who reported eating chocolate more frequently were thinner than those who ate less, as measured by their body mass index (BMI). Golomb says that based on previous studies documenting the health benefits of chocolate, she expected that these metabolic benefits might, at best, compensate for the extra calories. "I wasn't expecting that BMI would be favorable," says Golomb. "That was a nice surprise."
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