Your man doesn’t have a sweet tooth for chocolate? Well a study says that chocolate is great at reducing stroke risk in men. Maybe that would be enough to convince him it’s OK to try some of your Valentine’s Day chocolates.

A study by researchers at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found that men who eat European chocolate present a reduced stroke risk. Just one bar of chocolate a week can do wonders for a man, as it is reducing stroke risk by one sixth.

For a period of 10 years, researchers at the Karolinska Institute studied the effects of eating chocolate on more than 37,000 men aged 45 to 79. The results were surprisingly specific: men who eat chocolate have a reduced risk of stroke. Men who ate the largest amount of chocolate (one-third of a cup per week) presented a 17 percent reduced risk of stroke.

“While other studies have looked at how chocolate may help cardiovascular health, this is the first of its kind to find that chocolate may be beneficial in reducing stroke in men” reads the study published in journal Neurology this Wednesday.

The study also comes to reinforce previous results showing that there is really a connection between chocolate intake and reducing the risk of cardiovascular episodes. And the best part is that while previous studies confirmed chocolate was great at reducing stroke risk in women, it does just as great in reducing men’s risk of stroke.

And another good thing: the chocolate that can reduce the risk of stroke doesn’t necessarily have to be of the dark kind. Researchers say that 90 percent of the chocolate used in the study was milk chocolate. Since men don’t necessarily look into their health eating habits until older age when doctors force a diet, this might be a chance to keep your man healthy and happy.

But not all experts think eating milk chocolate would actually count in reducing the stroke risk. Dr. Roger A. Brumback, not involved with the study but a professor of pathology, neurology and psychiatry at Creighton University Medical Center, warns that milk chocolate isn’t as beneficial as the dark kind.

“The major advantage of dark chocolate over milk chocolate is that the flavonoids are not diluted by the addition of milk” said Dr. Brumback. So to get the same flavonoids intake means to eat a lot more milk chocolate, while also eating more sugar.