Swedish researchers recently conducted a study that suggests eating more chocolate increases the survival rate of those who suffer heart attacks. The study wasn’t the most scientific, and it seems that most of the subjects were living in Sweden, which is hardly a reliable result for people everywhere. But since I’m Swedish and I like chocolate, this news certainly stuck out for me. The national chocolate of Sweden is Marabou which produces milk chocolate much more than it does dark chocolate, at least based on my visits there and the chocolate that I see on sale here in this country. And since dark chocolate is much healthier than milk chocolate, I would think that some other force is at work here than making the blanket suggestion that eating chocolate will reduce your chances of dying from a heart attack.

“…scientists followed 1,169 nondiabetic men and women who had been hospitalized for a first heart attack. Each filled out a standardized health questionnaire that included a question about chocolate consumption over the past 12 months. Chocolate contains flavonoid antioxidants that are widely believed to have beneficial cardiovascular effects.

The patients had a health examination three months after their discharge from the hospital, and researchers followed them for the next eight years using Swedish national registries of hospitalizations and deaths. After controlling for age, sex, obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, education and other factors, they found that the more chocolate people consumed, the more likely they were to survive.”

In my ideal world, this would be true all the time.

Read more about the study.