Is eating two chocolate bars a day healthy?

Chocolate is many people’s lover, it is without a doubt one of our guilty pleasure. During my sophomore year, I remembered that my roommate used to tell me that eating a chocolate bar a day is healthy and I did believed him but did not do any further research on it. Since taking this class, I somehow had a reminiscence of what he told me. Thus, I decide to write a blog on it and read numerous article about this myth.

chocolate-bar

Is eating two chocolate bars a day healthy?

According to the article I found, it seems that eating two chocolate bar (100g of chocolate) is actually helping our heart to be healthy. The first article talks about a study, which tried to find ouat whether eating dark or milk chocolate is beneficial to our health. Their sample were 21,000 people from UK, in Norwich and the researcher have been regulating them for 12 years. They found out that the regular chocolate eaters, who ate around 100 grams per day, were less likely to get heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular diseases by 11% and also found that there is 25% reduction in the chance of dying from these heart issues.

To test the validity of these findings, I look into other article that had numerous study. It first mentioned a study conducted by Harvard, where they look at 31,823 Swedish women of age 48 to 83 who ate an ounce of chocolate each month. The women were showing to have their heart problem reduced by 32% and the study also mentioned that eating more would prevent the benefits.This is only 28 grams a month which already contradicts with the Norwich study findings who said that they are consuming 100 grams of chocolate per day. This means that they miscalculate and gave a false amount in their results.

However, this same article also mentioned a study with 44,000 participants who ate chocolate weekly were having 22% less chance of getting stroke compared to those that do not eat at all. Moreover, Both these article recognizes the fact that both dark and milk chocolate have flavonoids, which is an antioxidants that helps the blood to flow better. Milk chocolate also have other beneficial compounds such as calcium and fatty acids. Therefore, it would still be safe to say that eating chocolate is beneficial to our health but not at 100 grams of it.

What should I conclude and do?

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As mentioned, it seems that the correct amount of chocolate that needs to be consumed is still skeptical. Another article I found also criticized the Norwich study and states that we should eat on average only 7 grams of chocolate per day. They did say that eating chocolate can be beneficial but it is too reckless to believe that consuming 100 grams of chocolate would be healthy. On the other hand, I would conclude that we should still reject the null hypothesis because it seems that there are still many evidences of large sample that demonstrate that chocolate is beneficial to us. However, we should bear in mind that this might still be a false positive because these studies are observational so it is difficult to really relates the cause and effect.

By Dhaam Sakuntabhai

 

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3125548/Chocolate-curbs-stroke-heart-attack-risk-Regularly-eating-dark-milk-varieties-beneficial-health.html

http://www.livescience.com/36754-eating-chocolate-health-benefits-heart.html

Is eating 2 chocolate bars a day healthy?

 

 

4 thoughts on “Is eating two chocolate bars a day healthy?

  1. tmv5147

    Interesting post, really creative! I think that this research and the study behind it is great and really gets people thinking about their quality of eating, and in a way makes them realize that chocolate isn’t all the bad, I mean it is all natural ingredients. I have two questions that I believe would be important if someone is going to take on this task of researching into it more or going ahead and partaking in it. Did it say what type of chocolate it had to be specifically? Does the chocolate have to be consume in whole directly? Am I allowed to drink a chocolate milk or eat a brownie and still have it be included in my daily dose?

  2. Samantha Francesca Sichenze

    Great job Dhaam! This blog caught my eye when I was scrolling down because of the word “chocolate.” Everyone, all over the world, loves chocolate. However, I never believed chocolate to be healthy. As a child, you’re always told to eat your fruits and vegetables because they’re good for you and your body. You’re never told to eat chocolate, which is why this blog was so interesting to me. It’s fascinating to me that chocolate helps your heart and blood flow. The study that people who eat chocolate daily have a 22% less chance of getting stroke compared to those that do not eat at all is fascinating. Chocolate benefits people in other ways as well. Check out this article if you would like to read more about the benefits of chocolate : http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/10-health-benefits-of-chocolate.html.

  3. Mackenzie French

    I wrote my blog post on whether eating sugar and chocolate makes us happy or not, kind of relating to yours on whether it is healthy for us. I found that eating chocolate and sugar actually makes us to feel more depressed. Check out my blog post and see the statistics I found on it! But anyways, I would love to find out whether eating chocolate daily is healthy. I think other factors are important to consider, like the amount of exercise a day, how fast one’s metabolism is, etc. Here is an article I found you might want to check out! https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/should-we-really-be-eating-2-chocolate-bars-a-day-121689794217.html

  4. Margaret Marchok

    Dhaam- your article immediately caught my eye because I too love chocolate. Dark chocolate is my favorite, which is why I love all of the studies that have come out about the health benefits it has. Now, as much as I would love to believe that eating two chocolate bars a day will help my health, I am a bit skeptical about the findings. For starters, there are many possible confounding variables that go along with the theory that chocolate helps people be healthier. For starters, I would love to know about the participants in the study. What are there regular diet and exercise plans? What is their family health history? What are common illnesses in the areas they live in? All of the answers to those questions could have a significant impact on the validity of the study. However, there is no denying that chocolate does have its benefits. This is a great article done on the benefits of eating chocolate- http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/270272.php. Enjoy!

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