(Newser)
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Regular exercise might be bad for you, regular chocolate consumption might be good? So says a new study, so long as it's dark chocolate. (It's just one more study on the theme.) For people with hypertension and metabolic syndrome, eating about 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate every day was shown to cut the risk of heart attacks and stroke. Researchers looked at 2,013 people with both conditions and calculated that as many as 85 cardiac events per 10,000 people could be avoided per 10 years—if people stick to the chocolate-eating regimen, CBS News reports.
Milk and white chocolate aren't likely to have the same effects, the researchers say, perhaps because they lack the flavonoid power of dark chocolate; flavonoids have established "heart-protecting effects," the scientists note. But other experts didn't exactly endorse the study's recommendation: Adding daily chocolate to your diet may have "unintended adverse consequences," says one critic, who notes that chocolate is also full of sugar and calories and notes that the study is "more hypothetical than proven."
