The most important thing to know about chocolate, is that it is rich in a group of compounds called flavonols, and these are the same kinds of compounds that are found in grapes; and one of the reasons why wine, for example is so good for your heart.
Peter Jaret, says there have been several studies on the health benefits of chocolate, one of them at the University of California.
They took twenty volunteers, and they gave them semi-sweet chocolate, and they took blood samples two hours after they ate the chocolate and they found that the volunteers' anti-oxidant levels in their blood climbed dramatically. They've also found that blood pressure goes down after people eat chocolate.
And it gets better. Even some of the bad things about chocolate aren't really so bad. Yes, chocolate can be high in calories…about two hundred twenty-five calories in a one and a half ounce bar, and chocolate is high in fat.
About fifty percent of the cocoa bean is fat, and about seventy percent of THAT fat is saturated fat. It's almost entirely a fat called stearic acid, which turns out not to have a bad effect on cholesterol. It doesn't raise your levels of bad cholesterol.
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