There’s exciting news for chocolate lovers today as a new study has found some health benefits to our favourite tasty treat.

According to a study published in the journal, Frontier in Nutrition, cocoa flavonoids present in chocolate are beneficial to our brain.

They wrote: “Beneficial cognitive effects of regular flavanols intake, particularly in patients at risk, are presumably mediated by direct neuroprotective actions as well as improvements in cerebrovascular and metabolic functions.”

They added: “Furthermore, acute administration of cocoa flavanols could result in immediate cognitive-enhancing effect, sustaining performance particularly in cognitively demanding conditions, including fatigue, and sleep loss.”

Unfortunately for lovers of milk and white chocolate, the main benefits come from dark chocolate.

According to Psychology Today, “studies that measured and compared the amount of flavanols in different types of chocolate found a range of approximately 94 to 650 mg in 3.5-ounce samples of dark chocolate, compared to 41 mg in the same amount of milk chocolate.”

They added: “The darker the chocolate, or the higher the percentage of cacao in a dark chocolate bar, the higher the flavanol content.”

It’s best to stick to dark chocolate if you’re really after the health benefits.

But this doesn’t mean you can’t have milk and white chocolate too. Just make sure chocolate is part of a balanced diet rather than your whole meal!