• Los Angeles Times, Friday, August 24, 2007 12 PM

At a time when overall chocolate sales are as flat as a Hershey bar, customers are fueling a surge in consumption of dark chocolate. As a result, the number of new dark chocolate products tripled to 926 last year from 2002 and accounted for 63% of all new chocolate products introduced in 2006.

Hurt by obesity and sugar concerns, U.S chocolate sales fell 1% last year to just under $16 billion, according to Packaged Facts, a market research firm. Yet the dark chocolate segment of the market grew almost 15% to $4 billion last year. It now accounts for 25.1% of all chocolate sold and is expected to gain an even larger share in coming years as consumer tastes shift. Milk chocolate sales slid 5.5% last year to $11.7 billion.

Dark chocolate has gained cachet as a food -- like almonds, blueberries and red wine -- that studies say is good for the heart. That's because it has a high concentration of plant compounds called antioxidants, or flavonoids, which recent small studies have shown to improve cardiovascular function, said Dr. Leslie Cho, a cardiologist and researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, a large research hospital in Ohio.

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