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Want to Eat Chocolate Every Day For a Year?
Scientists from the University of East Anglia are studying the potential health benefits of dark chocolate, and need 40 female volunteers who would like to eat chocolate every day for a year. The chocolate loving 40 must be post-menopausal and have type 2 diabetes so it can be determined if the flavonoid compounds in chocolate can reduce the risk of heart disease. Dr Peter Curtis, of the UEA's School of Medicine, said, "Our first volunteers are about to return for their final visit to see if the markers of heart health - such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels — have changed. A successful outcome could be the first step in developing new ways to improve the lives of people at increased risk of heart disease."
I'm sure the post-menopausal, type-2 diabetic woman that regularly reads slashdot appreciates knowing about this study.
... on slashdot than post-menopausal women, I don't know what it would be.
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I bet Chastity Bono is kicking himself right now.
I've often wondered there... are you supposed to pretty much maintain your current lifestyle? What ifyou start working out like a fiend? What if you give up and binge on dounuts? I know the number of participants is supposed to smooth out that... but really, over a year isn't it likely that most participants have made at least one major change in their life?
Pre-Menopausal.
with type-2 diabetes.
THL phish sticks
Truly didn't post it, samzenpus did.
It sure as hell made me think of my dear old mother-in-law!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Just FYI: Flavonoids are polycyclic aromatic molecules, capable of absorbing free radicals through their conjugated bonds (i.e. moving the unpaired electron around so that a built-up of charge is not created (which drastically lowers its reactivity (and therefore stops a free radical's harmful effects (like the hydroxyl radical, which is used by fungi to invade the cell walls of wood (which is why flavonoids are being explored as wood preservatives, and why the Osage Orange tree is naturally resistant to fungi (since it has a natural abundance of flavonoids)))))). Flavonoids are good at absorbing the harmful affects of free radicals (unpaired electrons) in the body, and this can be a very good thing :)
Seriously guys, this is why scientists can't get dates. You have a requirement for female volunteers to come to your lab and eat chocolate...this may be the experiment that actually gets you a woman for once. Then, you screw it all up by requiring that the women be post-menopausal with type 2 diabetes, guaranteeing you're going to get a bunch of fat old chicks. Seriously guys, if you really want to have fun with this study, you need to require that the women be 18-25, physically fit, and sexually attracted to glasses and pocket protectors. You know, for science. Surely you could come up with some sort of sciency rationalizations to justify those requirements.
Just like drinking cofee and cigartte smoking, a steady portion of sugra will have just the same effects as smoking everyday for a year... will the study support the resulting eating disorders or rehabilitation at the end of the study?
Dark chocolate is relatively low in sugars compared to other forms of chocolate. Many Type 2 diabetes patients can handle sugar, without insulin, in limited quantities. If there are health benefits from the dark chocolate, expending some of your limited sugar intake on dark chocolate may be worth it, particularly if one of the benefits is to mitigate other risks related to diabetes.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
And how much chocolate are they feeding these people? Just a few grams a day or ???
Regardless of whether the dark chocolate may have beneficial compounds, the other components (lots of fat and sugar) are in general rather unhealthy, and EXTREMELY so for a type 2 diabetic.
Is the control group going to be fed a combination of fats/sugar? The control group will have to volunteer to engage in a fundamentally unhealthy and risky practice for a year.
Or are they going to be attempting to create some sort of "chocolate extract" with the chemicals being studied present but no sugar added and the fatty components removed? It'll taste awful but at least won't have significant negative health effects.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
that rarely ever eats chocolate? Just curious, cause when I say that to people in "the real world*", they look at me like I just whipped it out and pissed on their shoes.**
*yes, you all don't exist.
**I guess it could be that I actually AM whipping it out and pissing on their shoes as I say I don't eat chocolate.
Sent from your iPad.
Yes, I do.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Really dark chocolate seems to have some interesting health effects. Really dark chocolates have more cocoa and much less sugar (example, my wife is Type 2 Diabetic, if she really wants chocolate, she gets at 70%+ cocoa chocolate bar) then your milk chocolate bars. Eating one like that every day as probably the same sugar risk as eating a couple pieces of toast.
If it is lower on the cocoa content, then yeah, I think that would be somewhat dangerous IMNSHO.
Oh come on, how many times do we need to do this study? No matter how much you test it, eating candy will never be good for you. Isn't there an old joke about research funding and the positive health effects of chocolate?
Candy is basically sweet by definition. Dark chocolate contains very little sugar (how little depends on how dark the chocolate is). Try some dark chocolate with an 80 or 90% cacao content and then tell me it's candy. Mmmm... if you don't want to finish that, I'll eat it.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Jeanne Calment, the oldest person who had ever lived, ate a kilo of chocolate every week.
More interesting is that she smoked until the age of 117. As with Henry Allingham, who credited cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women - and a good sense of humour for his longevity.
I'll be picking up some Lucky Strike and prostitute this evening and do my own study.
Bisexual, attractive, nudist 19yo women who care more about her WoW character's latest adventure than shoes, that are looking to move into a basement, has a couple of friends of a similar nature that also need a place to stay, and hopes to trade their domestic skills in place of rent so they can afford the gigabit fiber drop, which they'd also share, but only if you agree to referee their jello-wrestling.
This is probably just an attempt to boost the market for dark chocolate. Some people who just read about this study before it's even conducted may be lead to assume that dark chocolate is a healthy alternative to a well-balanced diet and maybe exercise, or believe chocolate is somehow good for diabetes, or any number of other negative effects.
Worse, due to the desire to have a healthier lifestyle and the target audience being social, this false belief may get disseminated further.
I do hope that for the sake of ethics these people are honestly in the belief that dark chocolate will have a positive effect on this group are not just trying to sell more chocolate.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Finding 40 women willing to eat chocolate daily: easy.
Finding 40 women that will agree to NOT eat ANY chocolate for a year, as a control: yeah, good luck with that.
And here's your webcomic reference: PhD Comics
So just because it has a low amount of sugar, it can't be bad for you? In that case, I'll use the whole stick of butter tomorrow at breakfast. All natural!
I thought we were talking about candy.
If we're talking about fats, it's pretty widely accepted that vegetable fats, even solid ones, are better for you than animal fats (unless they're hydrogenated).
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It's unfortunate that the average person will not realize the difference between the real unprocessed/unsweetened dark chocolate being used for the study and the "dark chocolate" processed candy products you find at convenience stores.
Real dark chocolate tastes like ass, so basically all mass market dark chocolate products will add sugar and milk fat to enhance the flavor which will surely negate any sort of heart-friendly health benefits that this study is meant to find. Seems to me like it's going to yet another piece of misleading and confusing information when it comes to the world of nutrition.
What about cough drops?
.sig withheld by request
Sure, chocolate is better for you than eating suet or lard; but this isn't valid a reasonable comparison.
X calories of steak is much better food than X calories of chocolate; even if only because it leaves you feeling "full" and satisfied.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
All of what you said, plus a predilection for hot grits.
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No problem, they just need to climb up one floor from their basement and voila, they can show the article to their mother :).
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I'm not sure what exactly you have against a perfectly natural food. If we were arguing about saltine crackers or bagels with cream cheese or something I could understand it, but this not so much.
Really dark chocolate doesn't have all that many calories. It's not that fatty. It isn't loaded with sugar. (Have you ever had, say, 80% dark chocolate? It's quite bitter, very slightly dry, and 90% is even more so...) I'd personally expect that it would be somewhat difficult to get a comparable amount of calories of dark chocolate compared to any reasonable amount of steak. (Hershey's "dark" chocolate, which is loaded with sugar and fat, doesn't count, of course.)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Real dark chocolate tastes like ass.
Yeah, just like single-malt scotch.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Theory: Making diabetics eat candy every day will result in something good. Proposal: Give us funding so we can feed diabetics candy. Every day.
Oh, so you watched "Big Bang Theory" the other night, too. I don't generally, but happened to catch a few moments.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
For chocolate lovers who don't fit the demographics, peruse this list of ongoing clinical trials, you might get lucky:
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=chocolate
I think the article descirbes this one, FLAVO, which compares flavonoid-enhanced chocolate with unenhanced:
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00677599?term=chocolate&rank=18
For study subjects: "Flavonoid compounds from cocoa (including epicatechin) and soy to be consumed for 365days in the experimental intervention (versus placebo consumption). 27g chocolate bar the vehicle for flavonoid enrichment."
For controls: "27g placebo chocolate bar to be consumed for 365 days."
27g is about 1 oz. Typical commercial chocolate bars are maybe 1.5 oz.
All that dark chocolate might help them crap out all sorts of unhealthier things they ate months prior to the test. Hopefully, they drink enough water so they don't become a diuretic diabetic in dire need of a medic.
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Is that a singles advert? As long as you don't touch the table saw or drill press in the basement and don't mind me going down at random times, you can come on over.
I'm just going to go ahead and cut&paste that into craigslist and see if I get any responses. Even if you get a girl that meets 8 out of those 10... you're still well on your way to an awesome time.
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So it's okay to leave off 'attractive' and 'women', then?
Well, maybe you can compromise on chocolate-covered bacon?
Uh, yeah. Pure 100% chocolate is "only" 53% fat, 60% of which is saturated... :-/ That's about twice as much fat by weight as a "lean" cut of steak...
It's trivial to get a good comparison of nutrition; go to nutritiondata.com (or anywhere else - but this one seems to have the most data and the least ads), and search for "baking chocolate" which is of course 100% chocolate, and will be very close to premium dark chocolate in nutrition facts, if not necessarily in taste. (Although Ghirardelli's baking chocolate gives premium chocolates a run for their money, imho.)
I have nothing against chocolate, but in anything but small amounts, it's just not good for you. I eat it as a delicacy, anything from Hershey's Dark (hey, it's cheap) to premium 99% cacao; single-origins; and even the aforementioned straight Ghirardelli's baking chocolate (100%).
Also, what's unnatural about saltine crackers and cream cheese? Saltines: hull and grind wheat; add salt and water; bake (of course nowadays they add crisco, but you can get them without it...). Cream cheese: milk a cow; add tailored bacteria; wait. I'm not seeing the problem here...
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
It wouldn't be hard to make this double blind, you'd grind up chocolate and put it in capsules, and then grind up something inert, dye it brown, and put that in capsules. Don't tell the dispenser or the taker which group they're in. Of course the takers could open the capsules and try to guess which group they were in, but yeah, it's not impossible to do a good job double-blinding this, it's just not as interesting for the taker if they don't get to enjoy the chocolate.
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Pre-menstrual women?
Post-menopausal men?
Hermaphroditic clowns?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Pure 100% chocolate is "only" 53% fat, 60% of which is saturated... :-/ That's about twice as much fat by weight as a "lean" cut of steak.
Chocolate is basically cocoa powder (cacao with the fat removed) plus cocoa butter (the fat). Dark chocolate contains less of the cocoa butter; the darker it is, the less fat it contains. Again, I was under the impression that even saturated fat from plant sources is generally considered healthier than most animal fats.
Also, what's unnatural about saltine crackers and cream cheese?
White, bleached wheat with the germ removed; animal fat, sugar, salt with all the trace minerals removed, etc. Basically all the nutrition has been processed out and then they've added a select few (iron, niacin, iodine, etc). I'm not saying they're terribly unhealthy, but they're a slight leap further from "natural" if we're comparing them to really dark chocolate. In terms of comparisons, I'd put milk chocolate in with the bleached, enriched flour, and dark chocolate more along with the whole-wheat varieties.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Meh whatever. I'll down the chocolate, wash it down with the whisky, and finish off with a cigar, and be a very happy man.
Keep in mind, that chocolates may have cocoa butter added, but very rarely do they have cocoa butter removed. What this means, is that baking chocolate is a lower bound for the amount of fat in dark chocolate. I have already shown that baking chocolate is very fatty, which implies that dark chocolate is, and I have nothing more to say here.
Yes, vegetable fats may be "healthier" overall (although I think the benefit is overstated), but the fact is, there is still an awful lot of them in chocolate; and a lot of them are saturated...
In re how "natural" various foods are, your subjective taxonomy is of no interest to me.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
The study actually uses extremely bitter cocoa powder, not sweet and tasty chocolate. The study is on the antioxidants in the cocoa powder. When sweetened, the antioxidants are destroyed. So, you have to choke down a nasty bitter powder every morning. Not something most people are willing to do.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
on bitter divorced men. I'd be a shoe in for the study.
Caring about fashion at all is a turn off.
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Given that Chocolate is an Aphrodisiac, I hope that change would be for the better.
uhhh*WINK* ;)
Hey, if you play your cards right and get to know the women in this study, you could wind up simply rolling in post-menopausal tail...
Bow-ties are cool.
Christ, is this posted on the wrong site!
Most of the regular girls, Bethanie, Silly Pixie, Queenoftheonering, whoever else... They left (figuratively and literally) to Multiply quite some time ago.
Some of these guys who post journals are married - but for the larger demographic, you have better chances finding a woman in the L.A. Galaxy locker room, trying to get a peek at Beckham's bend.
The rest? Well, I have two words: Joanna Rutkowska.
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But my mom won't admit it
I'm a boy,
But if I say I am,
I get it!"
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I'm sure she wouldn't mind you going down at random times, as long as it's on her.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
40 people !
you can't get statistics on anything from 40 people
either the summary is wrong, or the science is worthless
In particular, you could not possibly get anything about heart disease from 40 people unless you started with a population that had, say, a 50% risk of something over the 1 year of the study
math: say 50% risk of a cardiovascular event that requires hospitilization. That means, with the usual variability, that you would expect anywhere from say 20 -30 people to have an event.
how much effect would choclate have to have to see an effect against this background ? huge
Wait, I didn't know I wasn't allowed to be here... I'll just be heading out now ^_^"
There's more of us than you think.
Especially when it comes to electronics.
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Try some dark chocolate with an 80 or 90% cacao content and then tell me it's candy.
Don't! It's a trap!
I am the lawn!
No, its not that you're not allowed, its that you're underrepresented!
Don't go!
Awww, there goes another one.