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Yes, dark chocolate is good for you, but with a few reservations. The good news is that regular consumption of dark chocolate can decrease blood pressure and probably reduces the risk of heart disease, primarily due to the flavinols the chocolate contains. The reservations are that you mustn’t have too much of it, and it needs to be the right kind of dark chocolate. The bad news is that dark chocolate isn’t as good for you as broccoli.

Researcher Drik Taubert from the University of Cologne Medical College found that people who consumed 100 grams (3½ ounces) per day of dark chocolate showed lower blood pressure after ten days. This effect only occurred if they ate polyphenol-rich chocolate. If they consumed the same amount of polyphenol-free chocolate, there was no significant change in their blood pressure. (Polyphenols are a type of antioxidant flavinol found in cocoa extract, of which there is a lot in cocoa-rich types of dark chocolate.)

Diane Becker, who is studying the effects of dark chocolate consumption at Johns Hopkins, says that regular dark chocolate consumption makes your blood platelets less sticky, your blood pressure a little lower, and makes the lining of your blood vessels function slightly better. A Yale University study reached a similar conclusion, finding that dark chocolate or cocoa consumption improved endothelial function (functioning of the lining of the blood vessels).

Another class of antioxidant found in dark chocolate is catechins, also found in black tea. Studies suggest that catechin consumption can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and possibly also cancer. Although the studies were done with tea drinkers, the catechin levels are over three times higher in dark chocolate.

The Zutphen Elderly Study followed 470 elderly men for fifteen years. The third who consumed the most cocoa products had approximately half the death rate over the fifteen years as the third who consumed the least cocoa products.

Researchers in Dusseldorf found that consuming cocoa increased the pool of bioactive nitric oxide in smokers, which is throught to reduce the risk of vascular disease in smokers.

Here’s a 2005 review of the evidence which comes to the conclusion that “the compiled data supports the premise that the consumption of cocoa flavonoids is beneficial to human health”.

So what’s the catch? Actually there are several catches:

• 100 grams of dark chocolate contains around 500 kilocalories. If you add that to your diet every day, you’ll get fatter. So if you’re eating extra chocolate, you need to eat less of something. And the thing you cut down on needs to be less healthy than dark chocolate you’re replacing it with. If you cut down on broccoli so that you can eat dark chocolate, you’re not likely to increase your overall health. But if you replace sweets and cakes by dark chocolate, it’s likely to be a good move.
• The studies used 100 grams per day, but they were trying to measure specific effects. You might be better off with 50 grams per day, and increased variety in the rest of your diet.
• Various studies have found that the beneficial effects of dark chocolate are reduced by sugar, and cancelled out by dairy products. So you need to choose a high-quality dark chocolate which contains no dairy products (look out for “butterfat” in the list of ingredients) and minimal amounts of sugar.
• The beneficial flavinols are easily destroyed by processing. In fact, manufacturers like to do this because it makes the chocolate less bitter. So only the bitter types of dark chocolate are going to have high levels of flavinols.

Strong, bitter, dark chocolate is an acquired taste. But once you adapt to it, you wonder how you ever enjoyed the weak, milky, sugary varieties compared to the richly flavorful ones.

In the supermarket, look for dark chocolates with 70% or more cocoa solids and with no dairy ingredients, that are described as “bitter”.

And then head to the broccoli aisle.