According to study results published in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, cocoa powder has nearly twice the antioxidants of red wine and up to three times the amount found in green tea. The standard for evaluating the antioxidant properties of foods is called the oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) score. Based on the US Department of Agriculture/ American Chemical Society’s findings, dark chocolate tested the highest for antioxidants over other fruits and vegetables. Dark chocolate came in with an ORAC score of 13,120; its closest competitor, milk chocolate, had a score of 6,740; and third was prunes at 5,770.
Dark chocolate may help lower blood pressure in people with hypertension, and has been shown to decrease levels of LDL, the “bad” cholesterol, by 10 percent. In- cluding dark chocolate in your diet may benefit your heart by helping to block arterial damage caused by free radicals; and it may inhibit platelet aggregation, which could cause a heart attack or stroke. There have also been studies indicating that the flavonoids in cocoa relax the blood vessels, which inhibits an enzyme that causes inflammation.