Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at https://www.icmje.org/disclosure-of-interest/ and declare: support from the National Institutes of Health for the submitted work. JEM reports receiving investigator initiated grants from Mars Edge. EBR is on the scientific advisory board and has received research funding from the US Department of Agriculture/US Highbush Blueberry growers commodity group.
I understand the implied incentives, but either there is fraud in the paper, or the methodology should reveal how the scientists contrived false outcomes.
Otherwise, why does the paper conclude that milk chocolate - Mars' biggest source of revenue from chocolate - has no association with good outcomes and has association with weight gain?
> In the age and calendar time stratified Cox proportional hazards models, no significant associations were observed between total chocolate consumption and risk of T2D in the pooled dataset (table 3). After adjusting for lifestyle and dietary risk factors, we found that participants who consumed ≥5 servings/week of any chocolate showed a 10% (95% CI 2% to 17%; P trend=0.07) lower relative risk of T2D compared with those who never or rarely consumed chocolate.
To me, this sounds like there was no correlation, but after weighing the data by other factors (including BMI, according to the methods section) a correlation appears. Does that mean if members of a subgroup eat lots of chocolate, but also have much higher BMIs, because they also eat lots of everthing else, they could have a lower adjusted risk for type 2 diabetes, even if they actually have a higher incidence of type 2 diabetes? Am I misinterpreting?
They have a lower risk compared to others with similarly high BMI but don't consume dark chocolate.
BMI is a risk factor for T2D so to tease out the effectiveness of a given proposed remedy, you need to compare like to like, i.e compare people of similar BMI that eat dark chocolate and don't eat dark chocolate.
Participants consuming ≥5 servings of dark chocolate per week had a significantly lower risk of T2D (21% lower) compared to those who consumed little or none.
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-in...
Also, from what I've read in other sources, the higher the cocoa content in chocolate, the higher the mineral content (including these "bad minerals") in the chocolate.
And also — frustratingly — the soil that has these soil minerals, is also the soil that imparts what people generally consider to be more interesting/tasty terroir into the chocolate. The single-source, ethical, sustainable chocolate? Highest heavy-metal content.
In case not, my case would prove that chocolate is almost surely not dangerous
Therefore it is proven that there is a level of anything that is dangerous yet.
The Consumer Reports article presents investigative results that measured actual heavy metals levels in dark chocolate. It's worth considering by anyone encouraged to increase their dark chocolate consumption by the diabetes study.
The universe is incredibly, unimaginably stupidly big; how significant is eating a little bit of dirt in your chocolate compared to that?
To be fair, the authors do acknowledge these limitations of their methodology, and these kinds of studies are a useful part of the overall enterprise of science to explore and propose hypotheses.
> First, we cannot entirely rule out the role of confounding in our observed associations. We controlled for multiple lifestyle and dietary covariates that might confound the associations of interest, although residual or unmeasured confounding, or both, may still exist owing to the observational nature of the analysis.
Regardless, I'll go ahead and take this finding as a further justification to keep eating dark chocolate.
For instance, I wonder if we'll eventually find an NSAID that isn't hard on the liver, and low doses end up in things like vitamins. (My understanding is that that's the main reason you can't just constantly take small doses of advil - the marginal positive effects of reduced inflammation are outweighed by your kidneys and liver being made to constantly work harder).
If wonder if we'll eventually improve genetic and blood testing to the point where everyone can have customized daily information to help them make the best individual choice.
There sad reality is that cacao is extremely bitter, so every gram of sugar is sorely needed to balance it out. I've settled on 70% cacao (so like 29% sugar) as a good balance of being dark for the endorphins and still enjoyable to even eat. Over 90% it stops even being the consistency of chocolate and starts to approach something resembling a brick of raw cocoa.
Dark chocolate is great, but check the label carefully!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzWWOQMLttE
I like chocolate as much as the next guy, but personally my skin always starts itching all over (inflammation!) and breaking out in acneic pustules on the chin, be it dark, milk, cacao powder, whatever. It's the same reaction I get from other high sugar content candy.
The discussion is about chocolate in general, so noting that one form of chocolate is much lower in sugar than another is hardly "whataboutism".
Milk chocolate usually has higher sugar levels than dark chocolate.
85% dark chocolate has something like 3-4g sugar per serving. That’s less than what’s in a typical slice of bread in the US. Which may say more about the bread than about the chocolate — but the point is that you’re probably getting more sugar in your “healthy” lunch sandwich than in the morsel of dark chocolate you have for dessert afterwards.
(P.S. the chocolate also has more fiber than the bread!)
I can't believe I used to drink those glass bottle starbucks coffee drinks at one point.
They're unbearable -- like drinking a milkshake. It's so frustrating that convenience stores in the US rarely stock black cold coffee in cans or bottles.
Agreed. But I like embedded almonds too
I would be fine with ~25g one (even at the 1/2 of the cost of a 'full' bar) but looks like noone is interested.
I find in all cases, mixing dark chocolate with peanut butter even without additional sugar evokes a memory of my lifetime enjoyment of Reese’s and it is delightful. I suspect hazelnut or almond are good options too, and reduce sugar ratio further.
Funny enough, “organic” certified kinds can end up worse on the spectrum. Sometimes the source of the issue is the soil, other times it gets contaminated during processing.
Spices have the same problem. As well as anything concentrated, like protein powders.
What a surprise!
Outside of what I've come to refer to the "food should be food" group, if you regularly consume five or more servings per week of any food, you will do damage to your body in one of many ways. Ice cream, processed shit, hyper-sugar-content anything, soft drinks, almost anything at fast food joints, Starbucks and more.
I adapted the "food should be food" idea from Dr. Pradip Jamnadas' "bread should be bread" statement in one of his lectures [0]. Good foods include: Meat, poultry, seafood, vegetables, fermented foods (plain yogurt, kimchi, etc.), etc. Most good food items do not need a label.
People are hurting themselves every day with highly processed industrialized food to such an extent that eating five servings of chocolate per week (of any kind) is irrelevant. In other words, this study is about noise, not signal. And, in general terms, no one food item --unless consumed to a ridiculous excess-- is responsible for negative or positive effects of note.
In other words, if you eat shit food, you are not going to fix it by taking a bunch of vitamins, magic pills, injecting yourself with the latest magical drug or eating a few servings of a magical food purported to fix all your problems.
And then there's exercise. There's a massive difference between sitting in front of a computer all day and being active.
As I got older, learned about and tried a number of approaches to health maintenance I have come to believe that most of what's out there is harmful noise. The formula is simple:
- Be active
- Eat real food in moderation
- Avoid sugar (in its many forms) like your life depends on it
- Eat fruit in moderation and when it is in season
- Be highly selective when eating fruit:
- There's a huge difference between bananas and avocados
- Reject highly processed foods
- Avoid foods with nutrition labels full of crap you don't understand
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJ6-X3ESS4&list=PLN4uKfvSU2...
"Eat a balanced diet of healthy foods" is good advice but whether or not you've achieved that has nothing to do with whether you had 5 servings of the same thing or not. You can have an extremely healthy diet and still regularly eat something many times a week, just don't try to make that something a McDonalds shake.
"Outside of what I've come to refer to the "food should be food" group, if you regularly consume five or more servings per week of any food, you will do damage to your body in one of many ways"
Clarified, in simpler terms, this means: Do not eat highly processed shit food.
Restated, if you regularly consume five or more servings of shit food per week, you will do damage to your body.
There's nothing whatsoever good about these foods. Some of the damage isn't immediately visible. This is particularly true of maintaining healthy gut bacteria. The well documented connection between gut bacteria and the nervous system means that damage to gut bacteria can have far reaching consequences.
Furthermore, it takes time to repair damage such as rebuilding gut flora, fatty liver, insulin resistance, etc. There's nothing whatsoever good about regularly eating highly processed foods. Nothing.
My greater point is that health is a complex multivariate problem. The internet is full of single variable "fixes" that are nothing less than ridiculous. Eating five servings of chocolate, drinking wine once a day, drinking coffee, various supplements, etc., etc., ad nauseum. All of it nonsense. Eat real food in moderation and exercise. It's that simple.
I also recoil at some of these research projects, because, for some strange reasons, they always seem to reach ridiculous conclusions and the idea of the studies are ridiculous to start with.
Among these none has caused more damage to society than the government-pushed dietary guidelines published in the late 1970's. Since then, obesity and extreme obesity have absolutely exploded. Not to mention the whole menu of metabolic diseases that have come with a likely 10-fold increase in the consumption of sugar per capita and cocktails full of truly harmful substances.
I could go on. All I'll say is I am glad RFK is involved in potentially disrupting the way we deal with some of the things that have become leading causes of death in societies around the world.
This isn't a bad presentation on the subject:
Even black chocolate contains quite a bit of sugar and it doesn't negate the fact that chocolate is very fat.
I don't need scientific studies to know that eating brown chocolate will make you fat and diabetic while dark chocolate will make you only big. It's nutrition 101.
Average Quantity
Serving size
Energy 2300kJ
Protein 11.4g
Fat - total 35.3g
Saturated 14.6g
Carbohydrates - total 45.8g
Sugars 32.4g
Sodium 16mg
Yum!
It's not inherently bad, it's just that when you are already overweight like for instance 60% something American, you better avoid fat.