Question: what ingredient in chocolate helps prevents heart disease ?

Ruth Elderfield answered on 22 Jun 2015:

I had a look at the scientific work that said that chocolate helps prevent heart disease. They suggested that the flavonoids in chocolate could be responsible.
But the was a study where they asked people what they ate and then looked at how many people died of or had heart disease. They found that those who ate more chocolate had less coronary heart disease. BUT there were other things happening too, those who ate a lot of chocolate also seemed to burn a lot of energy with exercise, so that could have been helping too. They also admitted that people who had heart disease may have been told by their doctors not to eat high fat and sugary foods, so no chocolate now, but may have eaten lots of chocolate in the past. This means they would have been counted on the wrong side in this study.
It is always a good idea to eat a balanced diet, a little bit of different things rather than just lots and lots of chocolate.