Obesity prevention is a widely discussed topic in the U.S.

Researchers have found that certain foods help with the prevention of obesity. Surprisingly, one of them happens to be dark chocolate.

Many people associate the creamy goodness of chocolate with fat, but it seems that with the right kind of chocolate you can keep yourself healthy and regulate weight gain.

According to a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, eating unprocessed dark chocolate may help lower blood pressure and improve blood flow.

The Medical Daily has reported that this is due to the fact that dark chocolate contains so many flavonols, which is a type of antioxidant.

Food World News reported that researchers fed mice both low-fat and high-fat diets with various supplements, including flavonols found in dark chocolate.

Scientist Andrew P. Neilson and his colleagues found that adding the compound oligomeric procyanidinis (PCs) made the biggest difference in keeping the mice's weight down if they were on high-fat diets.

Fars News reports that they also improved glucose tolerance, which could potentially help prevent diabetes.

Researchers stated, "Oligomeric PCs appear to possess the greatest antiobesity and antidiabetic bioactivities of the flavanols in cocoa, particularly at the low doses employed for the present study."

Many tend to stray away from dark chocolate because of its bitter taste, which is caused by the flavonols.

Flavonol heavy foods include grapes and tea as well, which helps with the prevention of obesity and type-2 diabetes.

Dark chocolate in particular also helps improve thinking, decrease appetite and lower blood pressure.