This is great news for chocolate-lovers! Scientists claim that chocolate, which has long been associated with weight gain, can actually help prevent obesity, as well as diabetes.

Published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the latest study claims that an antioxidant found in cocoa, the basic ingredient of chocolate, prevented mice from gaining weight and lowered their blood sugar levels. Dr. Andrew Neilson and his team explained this was possible because cocoa is one of the most flavanol-rich foods available.

However, cocoa contains many different types of flavanols, and not all of them are equally beneficial. Moreover, the researchers were testing to establish the individual health benefits of the different flavanols by feeding groups of mice high-fat diet, supplemented with different kinds of flavanols, and low-fat diet. They discovered that adding one particular set of the compounds, known as oligomeric procyanidins (PCs), to the food made the biggest difference in keeping the mice's weight down if they were on high-fat diets. The mice also improved glucose tolerance, which could potentially help prevent Type 2 diabetes.

"Oligomeric PCs appear to possess the greatest anti-obesity and anti-diabetic bioactivities of the flavanols in cocoa, particularly at the low doses employed for the present study," the scientists say.

In addition, the latest finding comes after the study at Louisiana State University that claims dark chocolate can lower blood pressure and improve heart health. "We found that there are two kinds of microbes in the gut: the 'good' ones and the 'bad' ones," said Maria Moore, one of the researchers. "The good microbes, such as Bifidobacterium and lactic acid bacteria, feast on chocolate. When you eat dark chocolate, they grow and ferment it, producing compounds that are anti-inflammatory."