People who tend to consume many sweets in the form of chocolate, snacks, ice cream, and all sorts of pastries and sweet snacks, tend to introduce a greater amount of calories in their diet every day because of the quantity of sugars and fats that are the main ingredients of sweets – explains Dr. Maddalena Lettino, Head of the Operating Unit of Cardiology and Heart Failure at Humanitas.

This is a habit that opens the door to being overweight and obesity, especially for those who lead a sedentary life style because the body is not able to dispose of excess calories, or in the presence of diseases such as diabetes, which in turn causes damage to the walls of arterial vessels, in which the body is not able to metabolize sugars.

The fact that being overweight and obesity are a heavy risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, even serious ones such as heart attacks and strokes, explains why sweets are not good for the heart. On the other hand, it is better to moderately consume dark chocolate, which must contain more than 60-70% of cocoa to provide the heart with those antioxidant substances, called flavonoids, which have shown to have beneficial effects on the health of vessels and arteries. However, It is important to remember that it is necessary to consume dark chocolate in quantities not exceeding 10-20g per day, equal to about one square of dark chocolate.