URBANA, Ill., April 21 (UPI) -- University of Illinois researchers say they demonstrated an effective way to lower cholesterol levels -- by eating chocolate bars.
"Eating two CocoaVia dark chocolate bars a day not only lowered cholesterol, it had the unexpected effect of also lowering systolic blood pressure," John Erdman, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor of food science and human nutrition.
The double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study involved 49 people with slightly elevated cholesterol and normal blood pressure.
The study subjects were put on American Heart Association's Eating Plan for Healthy Americans diet two weeks before the study started; then they were divided into two matched groups. Two types of CocoaVia bars were then introduced, one with plant sterols and one without. While remaining on the AHA diet, participants ate one CocoaVia formulation twice daily for four weeks, then switched to the other bar for an additional four weeks
The study, funded in part by Mars Inc., published in the Journal of Nutrition, found a drop in total cholesterol by 2 percent and low-density lipoprotein, or LDL the "bad" cholesterol, by 5.3 percent -- attributed to the plant sterols that added to the chocolate bar and the drop in blood pressure to the flavanols found in dark chocolate.
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