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.