YOU are not going to want to read this: chocolate cannot be relied upon as a source of antioxidants to boost cardiovascular health. But it gets worse: drinking coffee and red wine in the hope it will prevent heart disease doesn't work either.

Fans of Turkish or Greek coffee have now been warned that their boiled coffee contains more bad cholesterol-bearing oil than filtered Italian coffee varieties.

Dark day ... Experts say health claims about chocolate are baseless.

The brutal news was delivered yesterday by the Heart Foundation following a review of more than 100 international studies on antioxidants from the past decade.

The Heart Foundation's national director of healthy weight, Susan Anderson, said the benefits of dark chocolate, coffee and red wine had been overstated, and the review was conducted following concern that these popular beliefs were misleading the community.