If you like chocolate, you’ll love this: a new study shows that individuals who regularly eat chocolate have lower body mass indexes (BMI) than people who eat chocolate less frequently.

Your BMI is a comparison between your height and your weight, and is typically relied upon as a general indicator of whether you’re overweight. BMI scores matter little for athletes and strength trainers, who usually weigh more than their same-height peers due to additional muscle mass.

The researchers involved in the chocolate lower BMI study were especially surprised at their conclusions given that the participants who ate chocolate most frequently also tended to consume the most calories, and didn’t make up for these extra calories through additional exercise.

Regularly Consuming Chocolate for Added Weight Loss? Maybe

The chocolate BMI study was conducted at San Diego’s University of California. During the study, a team of researchers led by assistant medicine professor Dr. Beatrice Golomb examined almost 1,000 adults ranging in age from 20 to 85. The average age of the participants, all of whom lived in San Diego, was 57.

The researchers poled the study participants to determine the number of times they ate chocolate each week and how much chocolate they ate per session. They then concluded that the average participant ate chocolate about twice per week.

After measuring the subjects’ height and weight to determine their BMIs, the researchers determined that those who ate chocolate more often than twice-weekly had lower BMIs than the subjects who ate chocolate at an average frequency.

Correlation but Not Necessarily Causation

The researchers warned that their findings only represent a link of correlation, and that eating chocolate more frequently will not necessarily lower your BMI. They admitted that future research, which would be more detailed and include additional measurements of the participants’ health beyond just their height and weight, would be needed before the researchers could conclude that chocolate indeed spurs weight loss.

In fact, the researchers already concluded that eating too much chocolate per sitting is detrimental to weight loss. The subjects who ate chocolate with the highest frequency and in the highest quantities usually had higher BMIs than average chocolate eaters.

“Calories Count a Little Bit Less”

According to Dr. Golomb, the findings of the study indicate that some component of chocolate may curb your body’s tendency to store calories as fat. She remarked that the findings almost suggest that “all of your calories count a little bit less” when you consume chocolate on a regular basis.

Indeed, chocolate – and dark chocolate in particular – has been proven to provide some very real benefits to your health. Some of these benefits include lower blood pressure and an improvement in your body’s handling of insulin, potentially lowering your risk for Type 2 diabetes. Prior to the University of California study, many researchers already believed that the benefits of chocolate outweighed its high caloric content.

However, Golomb believes that chocolate’s fat-fighting power may have something to do with its polyphenol content. Polyphenols are antioxidant compounds known to fight cancer, and they’re found in other foods such as popcorn, various vegetables and whole grain pasta. In animal studies, polyphenols have been known to improve blood flow and spur the development of additional mitochondria in cells, improving metabolism as a result.

Some Experts are Skeptical of the Findings

Registered dietitian Katherine Tallmadge disagrees with Golomb over the notion that the polyphenols in chocolate were responsible for the lower BMIs observed in the study since the polyphenol content of chocolate depends on its cocoa content. The average chocolate contains lots of sugar and relatively little cocoa powder, meaning that the typical study participant probably wasn’t taking in significant levels of polyphenols unless they were mostly eating very dark chocolate.

Tallmadge is also skeptical of the study’s results because of the researchers’ reliance on questionnaires instead of observational data. Tallmadge believes that the data reported by the participants was not necessarily accurate, depending on how well the subjects tracked their chocolate consumption.

For individuals looking to realize the health benefits of regular, moderate chocolate consumption, Tallmadge recommends eating the darkest chocolate you enjoy and limiting it to 10% of your daily caloric intake, so long as the rest of the foods you consume are traditionally recognized as healthy.

The University of California researchers agree with Tallmadge in that moderation is important. According to Golomb, the findings of the study “do not provide free license to eat 30 pounds of chocolate every time you eat chocolate,” for obvious reasons.

Consuming Chocolate and Lower BMI: The Bottom Line

Researchers from the University of California recently conducted a study finding that individuals who regularly eat chocolate have lower BMIs than individuals who rarely or never eat chocolate.

In order to best realize the health benefits of chocolate, it’s advisable to choose chocolate with a high cocoa content and eat a small quantity, such as half a small bar, at a time. You can buy chocolates online that have no preservatives and are packed with natural ingredients to get even more nutritional value out of your indulgence.

The full text of the study can be found in the Archives of Medicine.