Let's Settle This: Is Chocolate Ever Good For You?

Look, I too rejoice when I see headlines that claim wine is good for us. 

But according to neurologist Dr Richard Restak, some trials which show the odd drop of vino is good for us have flaws.

In his book How To Prevent Dementia, he pointed out that some “non-drinkers” in observational studies are sober because they’d abused booze in the past, which could have affected their health; this is one of the “built-in limitations” behind dietary studies, he says. 

Might those “limitations” apply to chocolate, which we hear is good, then bad, then good for us? 

Well, here’s what the experts say.

Sorry ― it doesn’t seem like chocolate is a health food in the form most eat it

You may have heard that dark chocolate is good for us.

But while chocolate does contain a surprising amount of fibre, and darker kinds do have more heart-healthy polyphenols, British Heart Foundation dietitian Victoria Taylor said “while there have been a number of studies looking at the effect of chocolate on heart disease risk, the results aren’t conclusive enough for us to recommend eating it for health reasons”.

She’s not alone. Cardiologist Dr Christopher Labos points out that while dark chocolate has less sugar than the milk kind, both usually have an awful lot of the sweet stuff ― along with a great deal of fat.

Medical research agency The National Institutes of Health (NIH) pointed out that some studies which have linked cocoa consumption to heart health do so based on data about the Kuna people, who live on islands off the coast of Panama. 

They drink “many, many cups” (more than five) of ground-up cocoa beans a day. But that’s nothing like the bars we get in our local shop.

So, should I avoid all chocolate?

Not if you like it! A 2014 study found that women who associated guilt with chocolate tended to have less healthy eating behaviours.

The BHF’s Victoria Taylor advised “rather than trying to make chocolate a ‘healthy option,’ remember that all foods can be part of a healthy balanced diet”. 

Even Dr Labos, who says many studies linking chocolate to positive health benefits are funded by chocolate companies themselves, agrees you don’t have to avoid chocolate ― you “just can’t delude yourself into thinking it’s healthy”.

And remember ― it is very hard to do a randomised trial, which is the gold standard of research, on diets.

That’s partly because, as Dr Restak writes: “We can force lab animals to eat food we choose for them, but we have to persuade people to keep themselves on the diet we are interested in evaluating.” 

For that reason, most nutritional studies are observational, which means they can’t prove a cause.