I heard through the grapevine that dark chocolate had some health benefits,
but was suddenly inspired to do a little research today when my friend
Arlene from yoga told me that she heard dark chocolate was high in lead. I
did find lead connected to chocolate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate#Lead - but it doesn¹t seem like
anything to worry about. I did however find that dark chocolate has been
proven to fight hypertension, atherosclerosis and diabetes (what??). Its
also found to lower cholesterol - believe it or not. The catch is the darker
the chocolate the better, milk chocolate doesn't count because milk
counteracts the benefits and the generally speaking, the more expensive the
chocolate the better. You want lots of chocolate liquor and cocoa butter -
the more of those, the better because that's where the benefit is. Here are
a few articles I found.

Dark chocolate and cocoa may help arterial stiffness (hypertension and
atherosclerosis)
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=1669

Can Chocolate Fight Diabetes, Too? (no way!!! really??)
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050813/food.asp

Dark Chocolate is Healthy Chocolate (fights high blood pressure)
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/73/81921.htm

If you're interested in helping to find out more about the beneficial
effects of consuming dark chocolate you can sign up for a clinical trial!
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00099476

And a nice little article for Arlene and I talking about the benefits of
chocolate for pregnant women:
http://www.willystreet.coop/Newsletter/Newsletter_Archive/0406/midwife.html

Well, that's enough to convince me not to ignore my chocolate cravings...
Now I know how to get the best health benefit from what I'm eating!