Straight away I will admit that it is difficult for me to give an unbiased opinion given my ultra chocoholic tendencies. So I will just present the evidence (media and published journal papers) and let you decide for yourself...
The good: CNN reported that plain chocolate is good for the heart, milk chocolate less so and white chocolate not at all - I knew white chocolate was a fraud!!! Here is the abstract for the paper. Discovery News have done an interesting piece giving a nicely balanced view of the paper.
More good, but only for some apparently: Both Reuters and the BBC talked about a study showing that, for some people, small amounts of chocolate consumption can reduce cholesterol. The benefits did not show up for healthy people and you should only eat one square of chocolate a day - more than that reverses the good done! Here's the paper. One good thing about the paper is that it combines the results across eight trials, but there are still only 215 participants included.
The bad: Eating junk food, such a chocolate, may "highjack" your brain apparently! Nice headline sensationalism. The original study does actually have some quite compelling findings, but the research was conducted on rats. That's not to say that the same neurochemical reactions to junk food addiction wouldn't be found in humans though.
I'm off to have some chocolate now...
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