Now we know the significant health benefits of dark chocolate, but there are a couple of things you may want to keep in mind if you're going to use it as a dietary supplement.

First, dark chocolate should not be eaten in addition to other treats.

Nutrition experts advise that in order to maximize the health benefits while minimizing calorie and fat gain, half of a three-ounce bar of dark chocolate should replace other sweets. If you eat about 200 calories and 15 grams of fat per serving (about 1.5 ounces), you should remove it from some other place, like snack food.

Simply because dark chocolate is good for your heart, doesn't mean it's good for your tummy and thighs. It's best not to exercise carte blanche with regard to dark chocolate.

The second thing to consider is where your dark chocolate is coming from. Behind oil, cocoa is the most widely traded commodity, but like other popular world commodities such as coffee and tea, cocoa comes from some of the poorest countries in the world.

Many cocoa farmers around the world in Latin America, Southeast Asia and West Africa live in poverty because the cost of production is higher than the price they're receiving for their cocoa on the world market. Their profit margin is often next to nothing because these farmers are usually unable to bargain and command a higher market price.

Plus, many children in cocoa producing regions are forced into servitude, a problem that grows in epidemic proportions as the demand for chocolate around the world increases.

According to the United Nations Children's Fund, 200,000 children in West Africa alone are sold into slavery to work on cocoa farms.

But because of the advent of fair trade, cocoa farmers are able to unionize and collectively bargain for better prices. Fair trade companies will only buy cocoa from farming co-ops where farmers get a fair price for their product and where no children are enslaved as laborers.

With the money earned from their fair trade commodity, cocoa farmers are able to build schools, improve labor conditions, install proper sanitation systems in their villages as well as fund other humanitarian ventures.

Wegmans sells three varieties of fair trade dark chocolate: Rapunzel, organic Swiss chocolate that retails for $2.59; Green & Black's, organic chocolate from one of Great Britain's largest chocolatiers, that retails for $3.19; and Endangered Species, chocolate from Oregon that gives 10 percent of its profits to endangered species recovery efforts, that retails for $2.19.

By buying these chocolates instead of your average heart-shaped box of bonbons, you'll be contributing not only to the health of your sweetie, but also to the overall health of humanity.