Eat Chocolate, Live Longer

Need an excuse to eat chocolate? The Daily Mail offers up not one excuse, but five, culled from recent research. But for these good things to apply, you'll need to get your fix from high-quality dark chocolate with a 70% or higher cocoa content:

• It’s good for your heart: It has flavanols, a form of antioxidant that can help prevent heart disease and reverse damage to the arteries caused by smoking.
• It’s good for your brain: Another antioxidant present in dark chocolate may protect against Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases.

• It’s good for controlling stress: If you have moderate to high anxiety, eating 40 grams a day for two weeks may reduce your stress.
• It can help you live longer: One study of 8,000 Harvard graduates found that those who ate chocolate lived nearly a year longer than those who didn’t … but ladies should note that this study only tracked men.

For the complete list, click here. For yet another reason to eat chocolate, click here. (More chocolate stories.)