A Chocolate Bar a Day...

Keith Sorrell of Walton, Liverpool, lives on a chocolate diet. He eats 12 bars a day and has been for the past 17 years. And guess what? He doesn’t weight 700 pounds. But despite what doctors have told him, he’s still living a pretty healthy life.

Though his diet may seem extreme, a little bit of chocolate every day is good for you. You’ve probably heard that dark chocolate is full of antioxidants that can potentially lower your risk of heart disease, but researchers now are developing “healthy” chocolate. Mars Inc., the company that makes the Mars bars that Sorrell devours each day, brainstormed a delicious solution two years ago. They created a chocolate bar bursting full of flavanols, a natural chemical and antioxidant. Mars Inc. is also now sponsoring research in London that will study what happens when people eat one bar of chocolate a day, “guilt-free.”

And it’s not just the chocolate companies that are out to build better chocolate. Just last week, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology mentioned that those flavanols in cocoa could make it safer for individuals with diabetes, but that chocolate on the shelves of stores are not at a safe level to eat yet.

What kinds of chocolate would you like to see engineered to be healthier? [The New York Times]