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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a new study, people who ate chocolate a small in number times per week or more weighed smaller quantity than those who rarely indulged in the soft.

The finding doesn't ascertain that adding a candy bar to your daily diet will help you shed pounds.

But researchers related it's possible that antioxidants in chocolate could have existence behind health benefits including lower vital fluid pressure and cholesterol, as well similar to decreased body weight.

"People consider just assumed that because it comes by calories and it's typically eaten in the same proportion that a sweet, therefore it would inherently be the subject of been, one way, bad," said lead researcher Dr. Beatrice Golomb, from the University of California, San Diego.

To criterion that theory, she and her colleagues used premises from a study on cholesterol-overcast drugs that surveyed 1,000 bracing adults on their typical eating habits -- including for what reason often they ate chocolate.

The participants, who were anywhere from 20 to 85 years aged, ate chocolate an average of twice per week and had an medium body mass index, or BMI, of 28 -- considered overweight goal not obese. (For instance, a five-discharge, ten-inch-tall man weighing 195 pounds would be in actual possession of a BMI of about 28).

The researchers fix that people who ate chocolate by greater frequency tended to eat more calories overall, including more saturated sluggish, than those who went light ~ward the candy.

Even so, the chocolate lovers tended to require a lower body weight. That was allay the case after researchers accounted because of participants' age and gender, since well as how much they exercised.

The efficiency worked out to a five- to seven-pound difference between people who ate five servings of chocolate through week compared to those who didn't corrode any, according to Golomb.

However, it was solely how often people ate chocolate -- and not the whole amount they ate regularly -- that was linked to their system of weighing, the study team reported Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Golomb and her colleagues remarkable that past studies have tied chocolate to drop blood pressure and cholesterol and good in a higher degree insulin sensitivity, possibly because of antioxidants or other chemicals in cocoa.

The of recent origin report was funded by the National Institutes of Health and not a part of the researchers noted any conflicts of concern related to chocolate -- other than predisposition it themselves.

One nutritionist who wasn't involved in the renovated research said there are a designate by ~ of possible explanations for the findings that don't necessarily signify a weight-loss benefit for erosive extra chocolate.

It's potential that poorer people stick to the basics at the time that they're buying food and put on't eat as much chocolate -- and indigence has been tied to higher material substance weight, said Eric Ding, from the Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Another chance, he told Reuters Health, is that "persons who lost weight reward themselves by chocolate, more than chocolate causing the ponderosity loss."

Ding said past manifest suggests antioxidants in cocoa called flavonoids are in the rear any benefits tied to chocolate -- especially murky chocolate, which has the most flavonoids.

"People know that eating the sugar and the profitable won't cause you to fail weight," he said.

Because the reinvigorated study is relatively small and couldn't substantiate cause-and-effect, it's unfeeling to take any lessons away from the tools and materials, according to Ding.

But the explanation for chocolate lovers seems to have ~ing considering calories and knowing that not quite chocolate is created equal.

"If you be exhausted chocolate, consume it in place of a thing else, rather than adding to your toil daily calories (and) try to be exhausted dark chocolate," Ding said.

Both researchers agreed that equanimity is important as well.

"This certainly does not produce support for eating large amounts of chocolate," Golomb told Reuters Health.

Still, she added, "For those of us that work eat a little bit of chocolate regularly, peradventure any guilt associated with that strength be quelled." SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, online March 26, 2012.

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