You’re biting into that chocolate bunny when someone jokes about eating up because chocolate has health benefits. You remember seeing news headlines about chocolate’s ability to reduce inflammation and protect blood vessels – along with other cardiovascular benefits. But is it true?

Sorry to burst your bunny bubble – if you dig deeper, you’ll see the definition of “chocolate” in these studies makes all the difference in the level of potential health benefits.

The first thing to understand is that there are three terms used to talk about various stages of the chocolate-making process:

• Cacao bean – the fruit of the cacao tree, which is harvested to eat.
  
  
• Cocoa – created when the cacao beans are roasted and ground into powder.
  
  
• Chocolate – produced when the bitter-tasting cocoa is mixed with milk, sugar and fats.

Most of the research on health benefits has focused not on chocolate itself, but on the cocoa stage – and more specifically, only on the flavanols in the cocoa. Flavanols are natural antioxidant compounds found only in plants, and that is what researchers are zeroing in on.

In fact, the longest-running study on the benefits of cocoa – the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamins Outcomes Study (COSMOS) – uses only extract supplements to gauge effects. This means you can’t reproduce the results from eating chocolate bars at home.

And even if you could, the research is mixed. The Mayo Clinic noted in its review of research that some studies show no difference after taking cocoa supplements for several weeks, yet others show participants are less likely to die of a heart-related event or may have a small reduction in blood pressure.

So the jury is still out on the benefits of cocoa flavanols.

But let’s revisit that bunny – because you can slightly increase its health benefits by following a few guidelines:

• Pick dark chocolate varieties. Dark chocolate contains more flavanols and less sugar than milk chocolate. Look for a high percentage of cacao on the label.
  
  
• Avoid white chocolate. It’s not even a chocolate; it contains no cocoa whatsoever.
  
  
• Look for cocoa or cocoa butter on the ingredient list. True chocolate must have cocoa as an ingredient.
  
  
• Watch for the label for chocolate adjectives. Food and Drug Administration rules state a product must contain cocoa to be labeled as “chocolate.” As a result, many brands are labeling their products as “chocolate flavor” or “chocolatey” to get around excluding cocoa.

Sources:
The Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamins Outcomes Study
The Mayo Clinic
Medical News Today