Want to Lose Weight? Eat More Chocolate
Study Reveals That People Who Eat More Chocolate Tend To Be Thinner
In a study that we’ll categorize in “That HAS to be too good to be true”, people who eat chocolate more frequently tend to be thinner than those who abstain from the tasty treat, according the The Wall Street Journal.
Researchers asked about 1,000 adults in Southern California how many times a week they ate chocolate along with questions about other types of food and beverages. Body mass index, which is a measure of body fat, was also calculated as part of the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The participants who ate chocolate more often didn’t consume fewer calories overall, or exercise more, than their non-chocoholic counterparts. In fact, the more frequent chocolate eaters consumed more total calories.
Before everyone runs down to Goodies By The Sea or Destination: Chocolate to start chomping down on your new “diet pills”, you have to read the fine print of this study.
But before people hoping to lose weight indulge in an extra scoop of chocolate fudge swirl, the researchers caution that the study doesn’t prove a link between frequent chocolate munching and weight loss.
Rather, the findings suggest that the health benefits of chocolate may be linked to how many times in a given week chocolate is eaten rather than the total amount consumed in that week, says the study’s lead researcher, Beatrice Golomb, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Eating a small amount of chocolate each of five days during a week was linked to a lower BMI, even if the person ate more calories overall and didn’t exercise more than other participants.
That’s right. You can’t go shove a pound of fudge down your gullet and think this is going to help you take off the pounds for the month; You have to go eat chocolate five days a week.
In an attempt to keep the good news coming, the Buzz staff is now going to head to Bridge Liquors to do some research into the health benefits of Vodka.
-Tristan Pinnock, Buzz Staff
