‘Is Dark Chocolate Good For You?’

(Medical News Today) Volunteers are to have chocolate delivered to their homes and be encouraged to eat 50g of it every day for eight weeks as part of a new research study.

Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast, funded by Northern Ireland Chest, Heart & Stroke and the NI Research and Development Office, are to study 110 people with high blood pressure for the opening stage of a three-year project starting in August.

The aim is to discover if a high fruit and vegetable diet incorporating dark chocolate and berries – which are all rich in important compounds called polyphenols – is better for the cardiovascular system than a diet low in fruit and vegetables.

Dr Pascal McKeown from Queen’s School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences who is leading the study, said: “The important thing to stress is that the chocolate we will be using will be very high in cocoa – at least 70 per cent. Standard milk chocolate has nothing like the polyphenol content of dark chocolate.

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