A Chocolate Bar Nutraceutical That Works

It would be nice if could eat a chocolate bar and find that both our cholesterol and our blood pressure went down. Well, it seems to be possible. Researchers at the university of Illinois, working with Mars Inc (who else, apart from Hershey?), developed the CocoaVia ® Dark Chocolate Bar, which contains plant sterols in addition to chocolate flavanols. Results from a study are reported in the Journal of Nutrition.

A double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study compared a chocolate bar with added plant sterols (CocoaVia) with a non-sterol-containing bar. Volunteers with a raised serum cholesterol were randomly allocated to take 2 CocoaVia or 2 ‘placebo’ chocolate bars daily for 4 weeks, and then switched to the other bar for a further 4 weeks. The 49 participants were on a low-fat diet throughout.

Regular consumption of the CocoaVia bars led to reductions of 2% and 5.3% in serum total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, respectively. Moreover, the sterol-containing bars reduced the average systolic blood pressure by 5.8 mmHg. An earlier study with CocoaVia bars has produced similar beneficial results in diabetics over a 6 week period. It looks as if we chocolate-lovers will be well-suited by this nutraceutical. Let’s hope they taste OK.