Patients Opt Out of Chocolate Prescription

Chocolate as medicine? I say heck yes! But participants in a recent study weren’t so thrilled with their chocolate prescription.

Dark chocolate is rich in antioxidants that have proven health benefits, including lowering blood pressure. You would think people would jump on board that option, but researchers found that people prefer pills to chocolate.  One third of the test subjects took 50 grams of dark chocolate each day, another third took an antioxidant-rich tomato pill, and the remaining third took a placebo. In the end, the dark chocolate had a greater effect on blood pressure, but study participants found it difficult to eat the chocolate and deemed it unacceptable as a long-term solution.

I’ll pause for a moment while you reel in shock.

50 grams is about the size of an average candy bar and that’s actually quite a lot to consume every day. Plus, having it prescribed takes some of the fun out of eating chocolate. But I’m guessing the biggest downfall was the type of chocolate used in the study. For the greatest level of antioxidants, you need to eat dark chocolate. The study participants were given dark chocolate containing 70 percent cocoa; if they were more used to milk chocolate the 70 percent dark chocolate probably tasted quite bitter.

So chocolate as medicine is probably a fail. But you can incorporate a few squares of dark chocolate into a healthy diet.
Choose chocolate that’s at least 70 percent cocoa and enjoy a few squares on occasion. You don’t have to down a whole candy bar each day — a previous study found that there were some health perks with even 30 calories of dark chocolate each day.