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Beware Headlines Saying Chocolate Is Good For You
BarbaraHudson writes: Many news organizations ran stories last fall extolling certain health benefits of chocolate. But it turns out the studies that the articles were based on didn't go quite so far. The CBC is running a pair of stories debunking chocolate's benefits to the average consumer: "Scientists have zeroed in on a family of fragile molecules known as cocoa flavanols. Research suggests they can relax blood vessels, improve blood flow and, as Small found in his study, even increase activity in a part of the brain involved with age related memory loss. But those flavanols largely disappear once the cocoa bean is heated, fermented and processed into chocolate. In other words, making chocolate destroys the very ingredient that is supposed to make it healthy.
That’s why Small’s memory study used a highly concentrated powder prepared exclusively for research by Mars Inc., the chocolate company, which also partially funded the study. ... There are lots of foods that contain potentially healthy flavanols, along with other bioactive compounds in complex combinations. So the question is: Would academic scientists in publicly funded institutions be so interested in the cocoa bean if the chocolate industry wasn't supporting so much of the research?"
That’s why Small’s memory study used a highly concentrated powder prepared exclusively for research by Mars Inc., the chocolate company, which also partially funded the study. ... There are lots of foods that contain potentially healthy flavanols, along with other bioactive compounds in complex combinations. So the question is: Would academic scientists in publicly funded institutions be so interested in the cocoa bean if the chocolate industry wasn't supporting so much of the research?"
Industries supporting research that supports their products! SAY IT AIN'T SO CRUSTY
If cocoa flavanols prove medically beneficial, we can figure out how to synthetically produce them in a dosed format. You might not be able to get health benefits by eating a chocolate bar, but perhaps one day your doctor will prescribe two flavanol pills every morning to treat your condition. This is how much of medicine functions. First, we notice something (in nature or lab produced) that has a beneficial effect. Next, we refine that substance and figure out a dosing system for it to maximize the effect and minimize any side effects.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Researchers do sketchy science to shill for corporations?
That unpossible.
And that, kids, is precisely why there is not, and never will be, a free market.
Because buying your own science is so much more lucrative, and the populace is so damned gullible.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Did they even manager to get the huge lead content under control?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
What the media regurgitated as findings made by scientific studies were in fact PR releases by chocolate companies filled with half truths and misleading information. Of course the worst part is how people have been convinced that a Snickers and other junk food bars are actually chocolate.
I work in an academic lab doing research. If some company wants me to work on chocolate and is willing to supply it, lots of it, hell, I'll find any damn result they want.
Aaaaand unfortunately the sugar and corn industries don't have deep, scrumdiddlyumptious pockets like Mars Inc: http://www.reuters.com/article...
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The marketing bots are out of control and use science in ways it wasn't meant to be. All a marketing bot needs to do is look at one scientific fact anywhere that says something remotely positive about their product and voila, advertising angle. I seriously saw Lucky Charms marketed as a health food once because the oat pieces are made of oats which are known to be good for the heart. Science is supposed to be unbiased, but the results are being used in wrong ways. You can say something good about anything. "Why not try toxic waste for a facial cream? It will give your skin a healthy glow."
God spoke to me
"In other words, making chocolate destroys the very ingredient that is supposed to make it healthy."
But you still get all the healthy sugar and calories!
Chocolate/wine/dogs/etc. are not always the best things to research in scientific terms, but they are some of the very best ways for a mediocre scientist in an obscure field to get his name in the paper.
Why bother finding a cure for cancer (which is really fucking hard), when you can feed half your friends from your chocolate stash for three months, measure the hell out of them once a week, then massage the data into something click-baitable, and *poof* you now meet Wikipedia's standards for notability.
Not always. If you want to give a grilled steak a beautiful dark-brown color, rub a little bit of unsweetened coco powder on it before you cook it. It also adds depth to the flavor. It also goes well in chili in small quantities.
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I just bought eight bags of Xmas M&M's for 75% off ($1.07 per bag) at CVS!
Are you suggesting that we let a bunch of pinko commie academics decide what to study with public money instead? By using funding from the Mars Corporation, research is channeled into what is important to more of us. Lets be honest, far more of our lives revolve around chocolate than they do the tse tse fly of of Northen Tanzania.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The reigning rule of thumb is if it tastes really good, it's bad for you.
If it's good for you, it doesn't taste really good.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The cocoa content of a chocolate bar is very, very small. And, it has been decreasing over time.
But what has also been INCREASING over time, is consumption of dark chocolate - sometimes very dark. These usually do have a lot more deal cocoa powder than the "traditional" chocolate bar ever did.
Any more I will not even bother with "chocolate" below 85%...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
After sanitary water (chlorination, et al), cooking food reigns supreme as the alpha contributor to human longevity.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Sure, and the reason that tastes great is because when you cook a steak properly, you get the mailliard reaction going, and produce a bunch of sugars on the surface of the meat.
Would academic scientists in publicly funded institutions be so interested in the cocoa bean if the chocolate industry wasn't supporting so much of the research?"
I love the idea that this somehow invalidates the research. The researchers investigated what they could get funding to investigate, there's no allegations that the research was non-rigorous or of any other improper practice. Presumably the results are valid and therefore valuable. Further, presumably this research wouldn't have been done otherwise so we've got some additional research we wouldn't have done otherwise. So what if it supports someone's interests? We all benefit because now we know more about the world around us and what is, and isn't, good for our bodies. Now go and take your ad hominems elsewhere.
Is there any question of chocolate's benefits? I mean, really?
Jesus wept. Chocolate has been one of mankind's go-to pantydroppers for centuries. Some guys get beer goggles, I get chocolate goggles. Three truffles with >72% cocoa content and I'm yours for the asking.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You get that even without the cocoa powder. What I'm talking about is the effect the dark brown cocoa has on the surface color and the way the cocoa's flavor enhances that of the meat. To see for yourself, grill two burger patties, but sprinkle a little cocoa on both sides of one of them before cooking. Then taste them and see the difference. If you can taste the bitterness of the unsweetened cocoa, you've probably put too much on.
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I'm going to go ahead and assume you have no idea how science works. For starters researching natural products, as these scientists did, is a very fertile starting ground when searching for a "cure for cancer". Unfortunately you seem to have bought into the myth that only big glamorous research is valuable, ignoring the facts that, by definition, we don't know what the outcome of research will be until we do it and that most glamorous research will probably mostly involve work that looks "mediocre" in value to you.
... It is scientists will agree with whomever pays them.
And least we forget... Someone is always paying the scientist. There is no side that can be trusted sight unseen.
Science has earned the credibility it has today because when push came to shove it created a framework by which bullshit could be told from truth.
Some scientists tell lies. Some do not. This is true of scientists from all factions and sides.
How do you tell the difference? Personally evaluate the results. Short of that you're getting it all second or third hand... and somewhere in there you could have some misplaced trust.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Silly you. You have apparently read the article and not the summary. This is slashdot. We skim the summary while ignoring the article, and if we're lucky we understand half of the summary. I have no clue what the article says, but the last sentence of the summary was "Would academic scientists in publicly funded institutions be so interested in the cocoa bean if the chocolate industry wasn't supporting so much of the research?" And my answer to that question is hell yes, even if the science isn't.
"Feeding half your friends from your chocolate stash for three months, measuring the hell out of them once a week, then massaging the data into something click-baitable" is not an example of real science. Even the MythBusters would at least be testing something very specific (i.e.: testing chocolate's effects on blood-pressure), based on a fairly good understanding of the what should happen theoretically, rather then doing a battery of tests and BSing the results into something marketable.
But quite a few real scientists would do something like that, even absent grant-funding, just to get their names in the paper.
Yes hershey milk chocolate is about 11% cocoa. However Hersheys dark chocolate bar is 45% cocoa solids which is almost identical to lindt dark choclate truffles at 43%.
...say chocolate isn't good for you.
I know it is unfashionable to RTFA, but if you do you will see that the story is about the non peer reviewed non research of a "cultural geographer" who did not have anything to say about the health effects of cocoa, but raised a question about whether one tribe being studied sourced its cocoa beans locally or not. Excuse me, but the headline made me think this was about the health effects of cocoa, not whether there is something magical about some particular strain of bean. Is there a story here? Is there even a researcher here?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The point being made was that cocoa doesn't taste good unless you pair it with sugar. By putting cocoa on meat, and then frying/grilling that meat, you pair it with sugar. Your counter example is not a counter example (no matter how delicious it is).
I thought savoury chocolate sauce was the national condiment of Mexico?
This is not always true. Good quality cocoa can taste great without sugar. However, most cocoa is not of very good quality (only 1% of the world's production is considered "fine".) Even then, most of the fine quality cocoa is not particularly good quality. However, I regularly make chocolate from a bean from the Dominican Republic that tastes like burgamot oranges and lavender. The flavor of the raw beans (or freshly roasted) is amazing and highly addictive. So in general, you are right but if the beans have been properly fermented and dried (something most farmers don't do well) they can taste quite magical.
Speak for your own tastes.
I find cocoa powder + non-fat powered milk + hot water delicious. Also cocoa powder + coffee. My wife also likes the first, but not the second. OTOH, she likes to take unflavored non-fat yoghurt and mix it with cocoa powder.
Please note that these are just our most common ways to enjoy cocoa powder. There are many others that work quite well, and none of them require sugar.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If you use enough cocoa that you can actually taste it as such, you've put at least three times as much on as is needed. One generous pinch per side is ample.
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All this articles, and even this one is seriously. All the commercial chocolates, even the darker ones, are essentiality over priced milk and sugar spiked with cocoa. GMO corn is also used to give them body, including in sugar form in what you know as high-fructose corn syrup well because it is cheap. So telling people chocolate is healthy because is based in cocoa is a delusion, deception or rather, being ignorant most of the processed stuff is no longer food.
And if you keep repeating the same thing over and over again, people will believe you.
Kid-proof tablet..
That implies that you think I'm lying. Do you?
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I think that repetition is doing nothing to support your point, and that it wastes your time.
I also am averse to adding anything to food for the sake of "color."
Kid-proof tablet..
This is the entire problem with modern research. The funding model has evolved such that if a researcher wants to remain employed, he or she had better damn well come up with the desired results. Research used to be "here's some money to go find out what is going on." Today it's, "here's some money to prove my conclusion."
The confirmation bias is built into the funding model.
Are you talking about the Cocoa that goes into the lovely rich flavoured bars like the Lindt Excellence 99% Dark Noir bar? Or are you talking about that rubbish that people put into their baking?
As always there are many different qualities of material out there.
Why can't they be researching chocolate because it's awesome? I want to "research" some right now!
What about the placebo effect? Eating dark chocolate makes me happy, and if I believe it's good for me, isn't it likely to have some health benefits due to this?
Plus, if I do all the things that they say will make me live longer - avoid sugar, avoid fat, get off the couch, drink my own piss - what's the point? Living longer won't be worth it if I can't do any of the things worth living for.
At least scientists have shown (possibly NSFW) that looking at breasts is good for your heart.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Chocolate consumption is correlated with a nice range of positive clinical effects. It doesn't matter if someone figures out one proposed mechanism is invalid, because the stuff still works. Just because we might still be learning *why* something works does not invalidate the effect at all.
I never claimed that I was rebutting the statement that "cocoa without sugar is nasty." My intent was to point out an exception to the claim, which I did.
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That is all.
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
The point is that your "exception" is not an exception. Your "exception" involves cocoa with sugar, and so is not an example of cocoa being nice without sugar.
I don't give a rats dick about dying from it's eating too much chocolate