Finally – Time to Add Chocolate to Your Diet!

Coming soon to a store near you – the latest and greatest food that will help you lower your cholesterol and avoid heart disease. Ladies, time to dance in the streets: this wonder-food is nothing other than CHOCOLATE.

CocoaVia, made by Mars Inc., will be going out nationwide in grocery stores by April. Don’t look in the candy section, though – you’ll be able to find it in the health aisle. Scientists have worked to create a dark chocolate formula that is packed with chemicals like cocoa flavinols, plant sterols, and soy. The company claims that eating two of these bars a day is good for your heart, based on growing evidence of the health benefits of dark chocolate. The research at Mars started after researchers discovered that the Kuna Indians, who live on an island off of Panama and consume three to four cups of cocoa a day, had lower blood pressure, less hypertension, and fewer cardiovascular diseases than their relatives who had moved to the mainland and consumed less cocoa.

Sounds great, huh? Well, of course the whole claim is being disputed by other health experts, who say that eating the chocolate bars are not enough to make a difference. While studies show that cocoa has short-term health benefits, none have been done yet that track subjects’ heart health over a long period of time. The chocolate bars are 100 calories each, “without trimming 200 calories somewhere else, or walking an additional 45 minutes each day, one could end up gaining 20 pounds over a year, wrote Harvard nutritionists in a February article about CocoaVia.”

Here’s my vote: being a dark chocolate lover myself, I’m thinking that CocoaVia is great if it replaces my usual chocolate intake. The lower calories and added health benefits would be icing on the cake.

What do you think? Can chocolate be touted as a health food, or is it just creative marketing? Check out the full article in The Detroit News.

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