Sweet…dark…in endless flavors and forms…who can say no to chocolate? I guess no one, especially that it is also good for your health.

According to scientific research, eating chocolate, especially dark chocolate, during pregnancy is good for mother and baby, as it could help prevent a serious complication known as preeclamsia, where the blood pressure soars during pregnancy and excess protein is released into the urine. Pregnant women who suffer from the condition sometimes complain of swelling, sudden weight gain, headaches and vision problems.

Dark chocolate is rich in a chemical called theobromine, which stimulates the heart, relaxes smooth muscle and dilates blood vessels, and has been used to treat chest pain, high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries, Dr. Elizabeth W. Triche of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and colleagues write.

The study involved 2,291 women who had delivered single infant. The women were questioned how much chocolate they consumed in their first and third trimester of pregnancy. The researchers also tested levels of theobromine in the infants’ umbilical cord blood.

The study found that women who consumed the most chocolate and those whose infants had the highest concentration of theobromine in their cord blood were the least likely to develop preeclamsia. More specifically, women in the highest quarter for cord blood theobromine were 69 percent less likely to develop the complication than those in the lowest quarter.

Also, women who ate five or more servings of chocolate each week in their third trimester of pregnancy were 40 percent less likely to develop preeclampsia than those who ate chocolate less than once a week.

“Our results raise the possibility that chocolate consumption by pregnant women may reduce the occurrence of preeclampsia. Because of the importance of preeclampsia as a major complication of pregnancy, replication of these results in other large prospective studies with a detailed assessment of chocolate consumption is warranted,” the researchers wrote in their study.

The findings of the studyappear in May edition of the journal Epidemiology.