A team of researchers at Yale University had found that pregnant women who eat chocolate at least five times a week are 40 per cent less likely to develop pre-eclampsia than those who consume it less than once a week.

Pre-eclampsia leads to blood vessels in the placenta failing to develop. This can drive up a woman’s blood pressure and reduce the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to the foetus. As a result, babies are often born prematurely and many die.

According to them, the chemical theobromine which occurs naturally in chocolate, particularly in dark varieties-could be responsible for the protection.

The study found that those women who consumed the most chocolate and those whose babies had the highest concentration of theobromine, were the less likely to developpre-eclampsia than who did not have chocolate.

Further one more delicious finding is that researchers in the United States have found that eating two chocolate bars daily not only cut down cholesterol level but also controls high blood pressure. The lead researcher Prof. John Erdman of the University of Illinois says that Eating two dark chocolate bars a day lowers systolic blood pressure.