Could eating chocolate prevent bowel cancer?

Next time you reach for that piece of chocolate, don’t beat yourself up too much as you could be doing your health a favour.

Researchers have said eating chocolate every day could decrease the danger of developing bowel cancer.

Dr Maria Arribas, of the Science and Technology Institute of Food and Nutrition in Spain, who headed the research, said: “Foods like cocoa, which is rich in polyphenols, seems to play an important role in protecting against disease.”

Tests carried out on rats showed the group fed a diet which contained 12% cocoa for eight weeks grew fewer pre-cancerous lesions when they were exposed to the carcinogen azoxymethane.
However Sarah Williams, a spokesperson from Cancer Research UK, told the Daily Mail that eating large amounts of chocolate could also be harmful to health.

Read More – http://lifestyle.aol.co.uk/2012/01/26/could-eating-chocolate-prevent-bowel-cancer/