Chocolate may prevent need for heart disease healthcare plan

Eating moderate amounts of chocolate could help prevent the need for a healthcare plan to treat heart disease, a new study has suggested.

Published in Circulation: Heart Failure, a journal of the American Heart Association, a study of middle-aged Swedish women found that the consumption of high-quality chocolate reduces the risk of heart failure.

The nine-year project involved 31,823 middle-aged and elderly Swedish women who consumed varying degrees of chocolate high in cocoa content.

It was discovered that those who ate an average of one to two servings of chocolate per week had a 32 percent lower risk of developing heart failure compared to those who ate no chocolate at all.

However, the benefits were reduced with the more chocolate the women consumed.

Those who had one to three servings per month had a 26 percent lower risk where as women who consumed at least one serving daily or more did not appear to benefit at all.

"You can't ignore that chocolate is a relatively calorie-dense food and large amounts of habitual consumption is going to raise your risks for weight gain," said Dr Murray Mittleman, study leader and director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

"But if you're going to have a treat, dark chocolate is probably a good choice, as long as it's in moderation."

Heart failure tends to affect people over the age of 65 and is more common in men than in women.

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