Tell me, what is the correlation between chocolate consumption, frequency, and o...

batch12 · 2023-11-02T13:03:22

> Compared to participants who ate chocolate less frequently at visit 1, those who consumed it more frequently were more likely to be younger, thinner, white, female, and smokers, to consume less alcohol, and to have diets rich in calories and fat, and low in vegetables and fruit (Table 1).

They 'adjusted' to try and compensate for this, but I don't think anyone would be suprised that respondents that had diets rich in calories and fat gained weight. There appear to be a lot of adjustments in the linked study. Besides this, the 'study' was just a survey (only from two out of four surveys due to missing data) and appears to not adequately take into account the serving size, exercise, or other dietary intake. Finally, it references three others with the opposite findings and hedges its conclusions with 'may cause'. I'm not convinced.

brigandish · 2023-11-03T08:58:27

> Finally, it references three others with the opposite findings and hedges its conclusions with 'may cause'. I'm not convinced.

Not quite. The Finnish study was about chocolate versus other sweets. The "Candy consumption…" in US adults was also chocolate versus sweets. The Association Between More Frequent Chocolate Consumption and Lower Body Mass Index was indeed as the authors concluded - intriguing.

However, Habitual Chocolate Consumption May Increase Body Weight in a Dose-Response Manner was, again as the authors say, more rigorous, and also had larger numbers of participants (one of those three studies had 19 participants, the intriguing one thousands but still less). It also was designed to check the smaller studies.

I would also find it hard to dismiss the larger study because it uses a survey as the smaller studies used surveys too, and the intriguing study used a very similar questionnaire (if not the same, I'm not going to check any further).

> Besides this, the 'study' was just a survey (only from two out of four surveys due to missing data) and appears to not adequately take into account the serving size, exercise, or other dietary intake.

I've no idea why you've put quotes around "study", because it is a study.

Regardless, references to stuff like fruit and vegetable consumption are all over the paper, and there's this from the heading Assessment of Dietary and Chocolate Intake:

“Participants reported the frequency of consumption of specific foods and beverages in nine predefined categories, ranging from never or <1 per month to ≥6 times per day. Standard portion sizes were given as a reference for intake estimation.”