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Finally.  My dream come true. You can lose weight by eating chocolate.  Well, OK, maybe not exactly.  But a new study has found that chocolate is a rich source of bioactive compounds, particularly a group of molecules called flavonoids, plant compounds associated with several positive health impacts, according to newswise.com. Most diet experts agree it's not what you eat but how much you eat, and in what combinations.  I've been a Weight Watchers member, off and on, since high school and what I've learned is that you need to balance what you eat -- some fruit, some vegetables, some lean protein, some carbohydrates (like sweet potato and brown rice).  You can even eat popcorn! But teasing out the possible effects of the compounds in your diet, and how it may interact with various diet interventions, is rarely studied. It could be that simply consuming chocolate in combination with dietary interventions has no effect, or it could make such diets eve...

Are you ready for this?  A study last year found that eating chocolate twice a week helped participants lower their BMI more than people who didn't. No joke.  CBS News reports that the participants -- 1,000 people free of heart disease, diabetes or cholesterol problems, and average age 57 -- enrolled in a study that measured the effects of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, "but for this study researchers assigned them questionnaires that gauged how often participants chowed down on chocolate." But -- and here's the best part.  Those who ate chocolate two times a week did lower their BMIs but those who ate chocolate more often than that had even smaller BMIs.  Don't believe it?  It's true.  My husband, the dentist, who consumes a pound bag of M&Ms a night, will be happy to hear this. "Even though chocolate can be loaded with calories, it's full of antioxidants and other ingredients that may promote weight loss," CBS News quotes the res...

Now this is the best thing yet.  We've all heard how exercise and doing crossword puzzles and eating walnuts (or peanuts or whatever nut it was) will keep our brains healthy into old age.  But guess what the experts are saying now?  Chocolate. How did we get so lucky?  A new study  just out says drinking two cups of hot chocolate a day may help older people "keep their brains healthy and their thinking skills sharp," according to a story at newswise.com. The study looked at 60 people with an average age of 73 who did not have dementia.  The participants drank two cups of hot cocoa per day for 30 days and did not consume any other chocolate during the study, newswise.com reports. Participants were then given tests of memory and thinking skills. They also had ultrasounds tests to measure the amount of blood flow to the brain during the tests. Blood flow in the brain is very important. Different areas of the brain need more energy to complete tasks a...

Want to know the new four-letter word?  It's " meat ." As Janet Fang reports at smartplanet.com, that word just doesn't "do it for us anymore." Whether you attribute the new revulsion to "pink slime," "horsemeat" or other disgusting terms recently used for meat, Taco Bell is now disposing of the word in favor of "protein." Yes, protein.  That's kind of like calling Hershey's, "chocolate."  We're getting all fancy, it seems, with all kinds of food. Fang notes that the USDA recently allowed recently allowed the pork industry to now call pork butt, "Boston roast."  Huh? But it's been coming for some time.  She points out in her article that a recent survey found that: A little under 50 percent of conversations about meat over the last six months were negative, often including words like “bad,” “concerns,” and “problem.” Only 6 percent of conversations about protein were negative, with ...