Cocoa ‘lowers blood pressure’

Eating foods rich in cocoa could help to lower blood pressure more effectively than drinking tea, a new study claims.

Both tea and cocoa-rich products contain polyphenols, which are thought to have a beneficial effect on blood pressure and risk of cardiovascular problems.

German researchers analysed ten studies published between 1966 and 2006, five of which focused on cocoa and the other five on tea and their impacts on blood pressure. All the studies involved at least ten adults and lasted a minimum of ten days.

In comparison to the people in the study not consuming cocoa, systolic blood pressure was an average of 4.7mm of mercury lower and diastolic blood pressure was an average of 2.8mm of mercury lower.

Writing in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers argue that the effects of cocoa are comparable to those achieved with blood pressure-lowering medications.

“At the population level, a reduction of four to five mm of mercury in systolic blood pressure and two to three mm of mercury in diastolic blood pressure would be expected to substantially reduce the risk of stroke (by about 20 per cent), coronary heart disease (by ten per cent) and all-cause mortality (by eight per cent),” they claim.

But the review of the tea studies did not find a link between drinking tea and a reduction in blood pressure. This could, scientists behind the review claim, be due to the fact that although tea and cocoa are both rich in polyphenols, cocoa contains more of one polyphenols type, known as procyanids.

They conclude that their findings should not encourage people to increase their consumption of cocoa-rich products, but do point towards benefits of eating products such as dark chocolate instead of other high-calorie or high-fat desserts or dairy products.