Images: Viktoria Beckinger by Julia Kiecksee | ‘Fragile’

Sin is a big subject at Anne of Carversville. We’re not making enough headway fighting monotheism’s male myth of women’s sinful sexual natures. But on the subject of chocolate, it seems fair enough to run a victory lap around the stadium of doubting Thomases.

A new overview study from the British Medical Journal finds that eating chocolate was associated with a 37% lower risk of developing heart disease.

The influence of chocolate — as already noted in numerous studies at AOC — can be so significant that doctors discuss pulling it out of the healthy diet discussion and adding it to a list of key health improvement indicators that include heart-healthy lifestyle changes, such as eating a low-fat, high-fiber diet, quitting smoking and exercising.

The new study led by Dr Oscar Franco and colleagues from the University of Cambridge analyzed seven studies of 100,000 people tracking chocolate consumption and cardiovascular outcomes. Five of the seven studies showed some benefit to eating chocolate. Overall, people with the highest chocolate consumption levels had 37% lower risk of heart disease and a 29% lower risk of stroke than those who ate the least chocolate.

It’s believed that chocolate attributes health benefits with its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. We share recent research below, some of it shedding new information about the actual process by which chocolate interacts with the body’s production of apolipoprotein A1 (ApoA1), a protein that is the major component of “good” cholesterol.

For us the confirmation is pretty clear that high-quality chocolate in small portions and not sugar-rich candy bars or sugar-fat ridden desserts in the healthiest way to consumer chocolate. This research is not a license to bring on the calorie-rich dessert tray.

More chocolate news:

Chocolate Health News

Daily Chocolate’s Huge Reductions in Stroke & Heart Attacks CNN 3/30/2010

It’s time to come out of the muck of religious sex scandals and write about sinfully-delicious chocolate. The seductive love potion — the darker the better — just got another big boost from health researchers in Germany.

Eating as little as a quarter of an ounce of chocolate each day — an amount equal to about one small Easter egg — may lower your risk of experiencing a heart attack or stroke, a new study has found. Researchers followed nearly 20,000 people for 8 years, tracking their chocolate consumption and also health statistics.

Compared with people who rarely ate chocolate (about one bar per month), the people who ate the most chocolate (slightly more than one bar per week) had a 27 percent and 48 percent reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, respectively, the researchers found.

Note: As always one must ask if the overall lifestyle habits of chocolate lovers contribute to a healthier lifestyle.

How Dark Chocolate May Guard Against Brain Injury From Stroke Johns Hopkins Medicine 5/5/2010

The positive health benefits of dark chocolate continue to build. Prior articles have focused on the Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that the compound epicatechin, naturally found in dark chocolate, may protect the brain after the onset of stroke, much like asprin.

While most treatments against stroke in humans have to be given within a two- to three-hour time window to be effective, epicatechin appeared to limit further neuronal damage when given to mice 3.5 hours after a stroke. Given six hours after a stroke, however, the compound offered no protection to brain cells.

Depressed People Eat More Chocolate Science Daily

People with more depressed symptoms eat more chocolate. This study on chocolate focuses only on a slice in time and doesn’t make any arguments about causality or a progression of eating more chocolate as symptoms increase. What the study confirms is a positive correlation between chocolate consumption and mood.

People with the highest levels of depression had 12 servings of chocolate monthly; those with lesser depression ate 8 servings; and those with no servings had 5 servings.

The findings did not appear to be explained by a general increase in caffeine, fat, carbohydrate or energy intake, suggesting that the findings were specific to chocolate. There was also no difference in the consumption of other antioxidant-rich foods, such as fish, coffee, fruits and vegetables between those with depression and those without.

Credit: iStockphoto)New Explanation for Heart-Healthy Benefits of Chocolate Science Daily 2/9/11

Midori Natsume, Ph.D., and colleagues noted in their new research on chocolate that studies have shown that cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate, appears to reduce the risk of heart disease by boosting levels of HDL, or “good” cholesterol, and decreasing levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol.

Natsume’s team set out to determine exactly how the phlyphenols, particularly abundant in dark chocolate, orchestrate these beneficial effects. They targeted the production of apolipoprotein A1 (ApoA1), a protein that is the major component of “good” cholesterol, and apolipoprotein B (ApoB), the main component of “bad” cholesterol. Research results confirmed that cocoa polyphenols increased ApoA1 levels and decreased ApoB levels in both the liver and intestine.

Further, the scientists discovered that the polyphenols seem to work by enhancing the activity of so-called sterol regulatory element binding proteins (SREBPs). SREBPs attach to the genetic material DNA and activate genes that boost ApoA1 levels, increasing “good” cholesterol. The scientists also found that polyphenols appear to increase the activity of LDL receptors, proteins that help lower “bad” cholesterol levels.

Dark chocolate lowers blood pressure, research finds Science Daily 6/28/10

A review of 15 studies into the effects of flavanols, the compounds in chocolate which cause dilation of blood vessels, confirms that eating dark chocolate has a measurable reducing effect on elevated blood pressure but not normal bp.

The reduction in blood pressure from eating dark chocolate is comparable to the medically-established effects of 30 daily minutes of physical activity and could theoretically reduce the risk of a cardiovascular event by about 20% over five years, according to Australian Dr Karin Ried.

In confirming the efficacy of chocolate to cause dilation of blood vessels, researchers agree that its efficacy as a long-term treatment is questionable.