Can Chocolate Make You Thin?

Now that’s a question chocolate lovers would like answered. I have always been a big fan of chocolate and have consumed more than my fair share over the years. The past 6 months or so I can honestly say that I have cut back on the amount of chocolate I eat, due to fears of it not helping my weight loss. But yesterday’s headline caught my eye when studies revealed chocolate can make you thin.

New research put forward claimed that people who regularly eat chocolate tend to be slimmer than those who don’t. Is this good news for chocolate lovers? Dr Beatrice Golomb from the University of California announced that the extra calories contained in chocolate maybe more than offset by positive effects. Read the results as printed in the “Times” written by Alice Park

Can Chocolate Make You Thin? The Results

Selection Of Chocolate

Golomb’s team asked 1,000 men and women how much chocolate they consumed in a week, and recorded how much exercise they did over the same time period. Eating chocolate five times a week was linked to a 1-point drop in BMI, though the amount of chocolate the participants ate did not seem to have a significant effect on weight. The chocolate-lovers’ lower BMI also could not be accounted for by exercise or eating less overall. It “clearly wasn’t explained by the fact that people who ate chocolate ate less food, because they ate more. And they didn’t exercise more than those who didn’t eat as much chocolate,” says Golomb. “So there is no evidence that this effect can be explained by any confounder we looked at.”

The results certainly don’t prove that eating chocolate every day will make you lose weight, but they do raise interesting questions about how better to interpret the benefits of chocolate. Previous studies have focused specifically on its individual benefits, such as the ability of its antioxidants to lower LDL, or bad cholesterol, levels, or the role that chocolate’s flavenols can play in lowering blood pressure and improving blood flow by inhibiting clotting processes. Even the primary fat in chocolate, cocoa butter, isn’t such a health problem because it is made up of stearic acid, which does not raise cholesterol levels, says Golomb. She says it’s important to consider all of these metabolic effects together to get a sense of the net effect that chocolate has on the body. Overall, that effect seems to be a positive one. Read the full report here.

Over the pass week I have found out that dark chocolate is considered a secret superfood, and now this study suggest it could make you thin, am I dreaming? It all seems to good to be true.

Well I wouldn’t go rushing out and stock up on chocolate bars just yet, because we all know that not all chocolate has the same benefits, eg a standard bar of milk chocolate compared to a 70% dark cocoa chocolate, and at the end of the day we all know it’s all about moderation.

Are you a chocolate lover, how much chocolate do you consume in a week? Leave your comments below and don’t forget to give this article a “Like” if you found it interesting.