
The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good - inertial
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/10/18/15995478/chocolate-health-benefits-heart-disease
======
WheelsAtLarge
I've decided that any study presented by the media is the result of
hype/marketing by a company with a bias. Year after year I've seen a constant
flow of "health news" that eventually turns out to be marginally true or
outright false. Here's another one. No, chocolate is not health food. I
suspect coffee is the next one to fall.

Most reporters aren't knowledgeable enough to distinguish between hype and
true breakthroughs. Because of this, they have to go to experts to determine
whether the news is valid or not- if they do it at all. Unfortunately, they
then get pointed to experts by the same companies that have a vested interest.
Additionally, given the news cycle deadlines, its impossible to do the story
justice.

On a related idea, 10-15 years ago, the news media was full of stories
reporting on how doctors were underprescribing pain medicines. The big point
was that when people needed them narcotics were safe and not addictive. Now,
15 years later see the results. We now have thousands of people addicted and
many of the dying. The tragedy is that the narcotic manufacturers were behind
those stories. They did it to sell more pills.

The reality is that we need to understand that we can't take these stories as
advice but as, what they are, entertainment and as something to research if we
have a real interest.

~~~
joering2
> We now have thousands of people addicted and many of the dying.

But isn't it also why Reagan announced war on drugs? So the government does
answer when needed (eventually?)

------
JosephLark
> “Dark chocolate probably has some beneficial properties to it,” said Salt
> Sugar Fat author Michael Moss, “but generally you have to eat so much of it
> to get any benefit that it’s kind of daunting, or something else in the
> product counteracts the benefits. In the case of chocolate, it’s probably
> going to be sugar.”

Interestingly, the chart just below this quotation shows that it takes ~70
calories of straight cocoa powder to get a "heart healthy" dose of flavanols.
With dark chocolate, which has less sugar as the cocoa percentage goes up,
they don't distinguish the type but you need 750 calories. That's quite a bit.

70% cocoa dark chocolate is somewhat (not entirely) palatable to most people,
but getting up to 85% becomes a distinguished taste even for dark chocolate
lovers.

Jives with my first thoughts after reading the submitted headline: that even
if they could show cocoa was good for you, there is no way that translates
into the standard Mars chocolate bars. I can totally see how it benefits Mars
though - I've seen people give way more twisted justifications for eating junk
food than "cocoa is good for you" as an excuse when eating a chocolate bar.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Not really a dark chocolate connoisseur, but your post got me wondering.
Hershey's Special Dark (which a lot of people are probably familiar with and
is way better than regular Hershey's milk chocolate) is 45%.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey%27s_Special_Dark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey%27s_Special_Dark)

Can't imagine 80%, but it's easy to get on Amazon. Thanks for the extra
weight.

~~~
blackguardx
I recommend trying Lindt chocolate bars. It is a good, entry-level (sort of
cheap) chocolate brand that is pretty wildly available.

Try the 70% and then work your way up to 90%. They make a 99% as well, but it
is harder to find.

~~~
ianai
I think my next crazy taste test will be straight cocoa nibs whole.

~~~
armandososa
crush toasted cocoa nibs with some agave nectar and they are great on spreads.

~~~
jibe
So take the sugar out of chocolate, then add it back on top?

------
BFatts
Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with
the money to do so. So, what should we expect from them? They are going to
look for research that is compelling to their business model, but as long as
it's not wholly misleading, why is it bad? All research should be taken with a
grain of salt.

I also have another question: Everyone in media is always looking for that
story to break about "Big Business" doing something. Big Pharma, Big
Chocolate, Big Auto... but what's the alternative? I doubt that mom and pop
have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop
research about pharmacology.

~~~
denzil_correa
> All research should be taken with a grain of salt.

The very fact of science is that you can take the same experiment and under
the said assumptions; you can repeat the same experiment yourself and come to
similar conclusions as the one done by the original scientists.

> I doubt that mom and pop have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell
> won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology.

AD Hominem fallacy - the status of someone has no relation to the outcome of a
scientific experiment.

~~~
alexanderstears
_AD Hominem fallacy - the status of someone has no relation to the outcome of
a scientific experiment._

That's not what the parent comment is arguing. The parent comment points out
that research is expensive and not available equally to all groups.

The status of mom and pop doesn't effect the outcome of their research. Mom
and pop weighing R&D against making their mortgage that month usually means
they don't invest much in research.

~~~
denzil_correa
The grand parent comment does venture in that territory the moment the
commentator says this

> And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology.

Regardless of Mom and Pop store investments, the outcome of scientific
experiments don't depend on who does the experiments.

~~~
alexanderstears
I'll give the grand parent that benefit of the doubt - pharmacology research
is expensive, there's a reason that most of the companies who develop
pharmaceuticals have multi-billion dollar market caps.

------
jesperlang
some random thoughts:

these companies benefit from _vague_ terms like "chocolate" and exploit
customer's pre-conceived notion of what these terms actually mean.

Of course no scientific study is going to find that Mars/snickers bars are
good for you. The trick is to make sure the good result from cocoa bean
studies gets linked to your Mars/snickers/product. So the process might look
like this..

1\. A compound in raw cocoa bean is found to help blood levels

2\. Cocoa powder is made from cocoa beans, therefor cocoa powder is healthy

3\. Chocolate with high cocoa powder content should also be healthy

4\. "Chocolate" is healthy

5\. Mars/snickers is chocolate right? Therefor these products are also
healthy.

Posts on health blogs, marketing campaigns, etc. water down the results from
(1) and draw their own conclusions, and there you go. People go out and by all
kinds of chocolate products.

Similar stuff happen with things like green tea (super healthy, but your sugar
drenched matcha latte is not), fruits and vegetables in general. A
"productized" version of these raw foods is easier to control and cheaper than
the real deal. That's the sad reality I guess.

edit: Key take... it's not that sponsored studies are necessarily misleading
or "fake". It's the purpose of exploiting the key results of the study by
somehow linking them with your product in a positive way!

------
colordrops
I noticed a while ago how every three months or so a new big study would be at
the top of google news about how great coffee is for you. I decided one time
to dig into the sources and of course the study was funded by a coffee
industry consortium.

------
scrapcode
I recently pondered the possibility that this is happening in the vegetable
industry right now. There are seemingly endless documentaries on Netflix at
the moment promoting better health through vegetables (What the Health, Forks
vs. Knives, etc). They have some compelling evidence towards their claims, but
also towards possible corruptions within foundations such as the AHA and the
Beef, Pork and poultry industries.

Sure, it sounds like something a conspiracist would think up, but it'd just be
the same tactics that these groups claim the meat industry et. al. have done
to us for years, right?

------
Dirlewanger
>It may be that chocolate eaters are wealthier or have other characteristics,
aside from their chocolate-eating habit, that protect them from disease.

May be the main key to take away from this. Correlation != causation etc. etc.

Cant deny though: biting into a square of 90% cacao dark chocolate(make sure
it has more fiber than sugar) is an exquisitely divine experience.

------
ourmandave
If Big Chocolate wants to spend money to help me rationalize my 2nd (or 3rd)
Twix, who am I to get in their way?

(De Nile is not just a chocolate river in Egypt.)

------
sna1l
This is a very common move by food companies right? Curious as to what can be
done to stop it?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-
in...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-
shifted-blame-to-fat.html)

~~~
ianai
Society either has to fund more researchers with more money and accept the
ramifications of that or accept companies funding their own interests. The
same applies to campaign funding.

~~~
fleitz
Also, stop reading the news, when you see someone healthy, ask them what they
do and/or pay for their advice. (A lot of healthy people are in the wellness
industries)

Being healthy isn't rocket science, but on the other hand it involves a lot of
lifestyle changes.

------
bllguo
Would be less of an issue if society valued research properly, and enabled
scientists to refuse corporate funds

------
duncan_bayne
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

" Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR
firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my
brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a
huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional
media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half
probably come from PR firms."

~~~
duncan_bayne
Upon re-reading that, I wonder how often "politics, crimes, or disasters"
occur in the _same_ stories ... ;)

------
maxxxxx
It seems most nutritional advice is somehow skewed by commercial interests.
The fat vs sugar discussion was influenced by industry and the sugar industry
just had better lobbyists.

------
air7
> "... New York University nutrition researcher Marion Nestle (no relation to
> the chocolate maker)"

I know this is off topic, but what do you make of the fact that the
researcher's name is Nestle? Is it a total coincidence?

Turns out the commonly repeated idea that "Denis's are more likely to become
Dentists" (i.e nominative determinism) was proven false [1]. Yet, it seems
there are only about 500 people named Nestle in the whole US... [2]

It's of course just one data point, but it's still curious.

[1]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2014/01/09/...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2014/01/09/no-
of-course-dennis-is-not-more-likely-to-be-a-dentist-but-youre-reading-that-he-
is-because-journalists-cant-do-math) [2]
[http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Map/Nestle](http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Map/Nestle)

------
gnicholas
Revelations like this are why I'm skeptical about the current science on eggs.
The existence of a huge, well-funded egg lobby makes me wonder whether we'll
find out in 20 years that dietary cholesterol is actually bad for you after
all.

~~~
emodendroket
Who knows? Plenty of manufacturers stand to benefit from selling low-
cholesterol alternatives to dairy and eggs too, no?

------
jv22222
There's a story (urban legend?) in Ireland that the Mars company forced a pub
to changed it's name from "Mahr's Bar" to another name.

I've always wondered if that was true, or even possible.

------
rpazyaquian
I was eating a chocolate bar recently and I had this exact thought. Don't
trust articles that say "X is good for you" when X is a commonly advertised
commodity. Which is most things.

------
DoodleBuggy
> [Fill in the blank company] has sponsored hundreds of studies to show [fill
> in the blank] is [good/bad]

Now it's applicable to nearly everything

------
guelo
Besides the sugar my main concern with chocolate is that a lot of it is
contaminated with toxic levels of cadmium & lead.

~~~
doctorstupid
That's why it's called Cadbury's.

------
lawpoop
OP means cacao

------
norswap
> Cadbury Jr.’s newest confection loaded just about every buzzy health trend
> into a fresh green-and-white package: vegan, ethically sourced, organic dark
> chocolate and creamy, superfood avocado.

Hardly incompatible with it being candy. Avocado is super fat, chocolate is
super fat. What did you expect? Also fat and even "candy" are not synonymous
with unhealthy.

Sidebar: my first thought upon seeing the title: there isn't even that much
chocolate in a Mars bar.

~~~
sp332
Yeah that's exactly what the article says two sentences later.

~~~
norswap
I think it says exactly the opposite.

> Wait, what? Make no mistake: This vegan avocado chocolate bar is candy. With
> nearly 600 calories and 43 grams of fat per 100-gram serving, the bar packs
> more fat and calories than Cadbury Dairy Milk, and just a little less sugar.

> So how in the world could a chocolate bar be convincingly sold as a health
> food? You can thank a decades-long effort by the chocolate industry.

I say candy (some, not stuff with lots of refined sugar) & fat can be healthy
(in moderate doses, obviously).

~~~
emodendroket
The latest research seems to claim that fat has been unfairly maligned and you
should actually be eating more of it.

