ATLANTA — We've heard before that chocolate is good for your heart, but is it really?
Channel 2's Diana Davis has learned that researchers are about to start the largest test ever on a chocolate pill to see if those claims are true.
The three-year study by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute will test 18,000 Americans.
The aim is to see if the nutrients in dark chocolate called flavanols really do improve heart health.
Smaller studies, many paid for by candy companies, have hinted they do.
"These cocoa flavanols have been linked to lowering blood pressure, improving patients' cholesterol profile and even decreasing insulin resistance. They will be taking these pills twice a day for three years and then will see what happens to their blood pressure, what happens to their rate of stroke, heart attack and their cholesterol," said Dr. Jyoti Sharma, a cardiologist for Piedmont Atlanta's Piedmont Heart Institute.
Over-the-counter flavonal supplements are already for sale. The ones in this new national test will be stronger, Sharma said.
"These pills have a really concentrated form of these nutrients, the cocoa flavanols that you really can't buy over the counter," she said.
Half of the 18,000 patients will get the flavanol pills, the others get a placebo, or dummy pills.
Neither doctors nor patients will know who is getting what.
Even though the Mars Candy Company is one of the study sponsors, Sharma said she believes the results should be reliable.
"The other sponsor of this is the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which, as you know, conducts a lot of the best research in the country," Sharma said.
It will be years before there are any firm answers.
To get enough of those flavanols the old-fashioned way you'd have to eat an unhealthy amount of chocolate.
"The average person would have to gain something like 50 pounds to actually intake all the nutrients that are going to be in these pills. So it's not something we can go out and eat," Sharma said.
WSBTV
