Editor’s Note: We try to find a mood-enhancing topic for the Fourth of July Weekend. Thanks to a regular and clearly well-informed reader from Mumbai, our quest is fulfilled. Guess this article can be described as Mumbai’s Fourth of July gift to our readers.
We love chocolate and we try to eat as much of it as we can. Our well-meaning friends have tried to correct this habit of ours for years. But our love is so enduring that their barbs and insults failed to touch our soul. Now, thanks to a scholarly reader from Mumbai, we can say to these friends, Hah!
The May 26, 2010 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study by seven Chinese researchers. This team comprised of researchers from:
- Key Laboratory for Clinical Cardiovascular Genetics of the Ministry of Education,
- Sino-German Laboratory for Molecular Medicine,
- Hypertension Division Cardiovascular Institute, FuWai Hospital,
- Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Peking Union Medical College, Beijing.
The title of this study is Short-term effect of cocoa product consumption on lipid profile . In other words, this study describes the effects of eating chocolate on cholesterol levels. What did the study find?
According to an article about this study from the health & fitness section of the Times of India , the researchers found:
- eating cocoa cut levels of LDL, or ‘bad’ cholesterol, by about 6 mg/dL and reduced total cholesterol by the same amount.
- healthy people didn’t get any cholesterol-lowering benefits from cocoa, but
- people with risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes, saw their LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol drop by around 8 mg/dL each.
The article quotes Dr. Rutai Hui: “Future research efforts should concentrate on higher-quality and more rigorous randomized trials with longer follow-ups toresolve the uncertainty regarding the clinical effectiveness. Then we can really eat chocolate without feeling guilty.“
Way to go, Dr. Hui. Thanks for making our Fourth of July weekend guilt-free.
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