Researchers have found a way to make chocolate even more nutritious -- and sweeter, according to a recent study.

The popular treat has many health benefits -- it can potentially lower blood pressure and cholesterol and reduce stroke risk.

Cocoa undergoes several steps before it takes shape as a candy bar. Workers cut down pods from cocoa trees, then split open the pods to remove the white or purple cocoa beans. They are fermented in banana-lined baskets for a few days and then set out to dry in the sun. Roasting, the next step, brings out the flavor. But some of the healthful polyphenols (antioxidants) are lost during the roasting process, so the researchers wanted to figure out a way to retain as much of the polyphenols and good flavors as possible.

"We decided to add a pod-storage step before the beans were even fermented to see whether that would have an effect on the polyphenol content," researcher Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa from the University of Ghana, said in a statement. "This is not traditionally done, and this is what makes our research fundamentally different. It's also not known how roasting affects polyphenol content."

For the study, Afoakwa's team divided 300 pods into four groups that were either not stored at all or stored for three, seven or 10 days before processing. This technique is called "pulp preconditioning." After each storage period passed, fermentation and drying were done as usual. He reports that the seven-day storage resulted in the highest antioxidant activity after roasting.

Afoakwa said that pulp preconditioning likely allowed the sweet pulp surrounding the cocoa beans inside the pod to alter the biochemical and physical constituents of the beans before the fermentation.

"This aided the fermentation processes and enhanced antioxidant capacity of the beans, as well as the flavor," he said. He adds that the new technique would be particularly useful for countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America where cocoa beans produce a chocolate with a less intense chocolate flavor and have reduced antioxidant activity.

In the future, the team will be studying in more detail the effects of roasting on the flavor of freshly picked compared to stored cocoa beans. They will be testing different temperatures and roasting and storing times to determine if even higher amounts of antioxidants can be retained through the process.