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My reason for this maneuver is simply because of a study of islanders who drank a nasty brew of dark chocolate as a main staple and had little or no high bp and little or no heart disease.

I'm interested in learning more about the health benefits of chocolate and hope to look into the matter more in the future. A year or so ago, I heard a guy on a health oriented talk radio show talking about this. It's been awhile so my memory may be off, but I think he advised eating organic cocoa beans. There was lots of talk about bioflavanoids and antioxidants. In any event, he wrote a book and I don't remember the title but I think I wrote it down somewhere. I'm on my fifth 2 inch three ring binder of health notes and if I can find the information, I'll post it to you.

As for the broader issue of cardiovascular disease including the syndrome-X diseases such as type-2 diabetes, I think that they should be rare and not common as, in fact, is the case. I'm not a medical professional but I've been studying the issues of health, medicine, and nutrition, motivated by self interest, for almost five years now.

What most Americans, including most doctors, don't know is that what they are eating, and not eating, is slowly killing them. The typical diet not only contains very unhealthy substances such as hydrogenated fats, but is also deficient in essential nutrients such as the omega-3 fats.

About the islanders that you referred to, the chocolate they consumed was probably good for them, but don't overlook the likelihood that the fats in their diet were undoubtedly different than those in yours. Being islanders, they likely ate a lot of fish which is rich in omega-3's for example.