If you’ve long assumed that you must deprive yourself of delicious foods in order to be healthy, a new study published Wednesday in The BMJ offers encouraging news: Eating dark chocolate has been associated with a reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
The research did not prove that the chocolate itself was responsible for this health benefit; it could be something else about the people who ate dark chocolate that made them less likely to develop diabetes. And dark chocolate should not be considered a "magic bullet” for preventing diabetes, said Dr. Qi Sun, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the lead investigator on the study.
But the findings do build on a larger body of research demonstrating links between dark chocolate consumption and reduced risks of certain health conditions like high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and insulin resistance.
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