A new study brings some hearty news for chocolate lovers --- with Wayne State University researchers having recently found that dark chocolate is as good as exercise!

According to the findings of a new study published in the Journal of Physiology, experiments on mice have proved that small amounts of dark chocolate may help bring about an improvement in health in just the same way as exercise.

For their research, the scientists chiefly focused on the mitochondria - the energy-generating small powerhouses in cells - and found that chocolate contains a plant compound, epicatechin, which apparently stimulates the same muscle response as vigorous activity.

The researchers administered a certain kind of epicatechin from cocoa to the laboratory mice two times a day for 15 days. Alongside, a group of mice was also made to undergo 30 minutes of treadmill training every day. It was found that the exercise performance of the mice which had only been fed on epicatechin was the same as those running on the treadmill too.

Noting that aerobic exercise increases the number of mitochondria in muscle cells, lead researcher Dr Moh Malek elaborated that since mitochondria produce energy to be used by the body cells, more mitochondria implies more energy.

Dr Malek also said: "The number of mitochondria decreases in skeletal muscle as we age, and this affects us physically in terms of both muscle energy production and endurance. Applying what we know about epicatechin's ability to boost mitochondria numbers may provide an approach to reduce the effects of muscle ageing."!