Question: what is it in dark chocolate tha causes these cardiovascular diseases??

Luisa Ostertag answered on 17 Jun 2010:

Well, the question is asked in a little bit funny way – maybe the info I gave on my profile was not clear enough.

I am actually trying to find out if dark chocolate can PREVENT cardiovascular diseases. It might be a bit paradox as chocolate is obviously high in fat and sugar and as I wrote in my reply to another question, diets high in fat and sugar are NOT good for your heart.

However, chocolate contains cocoa and dark chocolate contains specifically loads of cocoa. And the cocoa contains so-called polyphenols. These are compounds found in all plants. They are not essential for the survival of the plant but they can have some nice properties that come in handy to improve a plants live, for example they taste bitter (–> plant is less likely to be eaten), they can be very colourful (–> makes flowers/ blossoms very attractive for insects who will pollinate them and makes fruits look very attractive for birds/ animals in general who will eat them and fly/ run away and poo the indigestible seeds somewhere else so a new plant will grow at this place, so this kind can spread out).

Well and these polyphenols seem to be the part of the dark chocolate that makes us less likely to develop heart diseases. So it’s not the chocolate but the cocoa that’s good for us. We just look at dark chocolate because this is the most convenient way of consuming cocoa.