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170 sats \ 5 replies \ @Signal312 30 Oct \ on: Is Chocolate healthy? health
I hate to burst your bubble, but most associative studies like this are trash. Even just looking at the abstract it looks weak (only 1 of 11 risk factors for cardiovascular disease improved?).
It was probably funded by the chocolate industry.
You may want to take a look at the book The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholtz. She has some outstanding analysis about our current nutritional guidelines and nutritional "science", and how we've gone very far astray.
Here's a post I wrote on the book:
This book is blowing my mind - The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholtz
Similar results have been obtained in other population based studies as well. Moreover, there are experimental studies that examined the mechanisms how chocolate polyphenols such as epicatechin reduce platelet aggregation and improve endothelial function.
Just because some studies are crap, doesn´t mean all of them are. Of 11 risk factors for cardiovascular disease the authors found 2 being improved (hypertension and risk for thromoboembolism), it is worth reading beyond just the abstract. These results are very clear, the study also has the advantage of a huge study population (more than 60.000 individuals).
The paper has been published by chinese cardiologists, I see no reason to believe the chocolate industry was involved.
Finally, this has nothing to do with Ms. Teicholtz and her peculiar theory about saturated fats, it is about cocoa polyphenols.
Dark chocolate is not some magic bullet. However, it is a great addition to a healthy diet.
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It's hard to control. Healthy user bias is always a possibility in studies of this kind.
Chocolate will likely have some positive effects and some toxic effects.
A mechanism for potentially beneficial effect is explored but we don't know the net effect.
Most plants are toxic to most animals.
Chocolate can kill a dog.
Is it doing some damage to humans as well?
If you enjoy chocolate then go for it.
It's probably not that bad for humans.
I wouldn't put too much stock in speculated health benefits of it.
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Another thing to keep in mind in this context: Publishing studies is not mandatory.
It very well could be the case that a company keeps ordering studies while not publishing them when they get a result they don't like. Eventually randomness / chance will seem to show a statistically significant result. We'd have to know how many studies they did as compared to how many they published.
Not directly related to this particular question, but just to point out how truly flawed nutrional studies can be:
Some of the famous "studies" (IIRC some of Harvard's Walter Willet's studies are of this kind) purporting to show that red meat causes various kinds of disease count things like macdonalds, pizza, lasagna etc as "red meat" because some parts of those foods may consist of meat. Sloppy and misleading "studies" of this kind are commonplace in nutrirtion studies. Unstated asasumptions (e.g. of all the things in there the meat surely is the ingredient causing the problems) and dearth of controls (e.g. healthy user bias. mgiht the people avoiding the junk food be doing other healthy behaviours which are responsible for better health outcomes?) seems to be the norm rather than the exception in these so-called studies which might more appropriately be called propaganda pieces.
It really largely seems to be a junk science / pseudo-science field, especially nutritional epedemiology.
Poorly controlled correlation studies and + spurious theoretical mechanism does not a sturdy reliable scientific argument make.,
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I agree that many studies in nutritional epidemiology are flawed.
But lets stay on the chocolate topic: I think the weight of evidence supports the claim that dark chocolate consumption provides a net benefit for cardiovascular health. Lets look at more data points:
- In a recent controlled clinical trial daily intake of cocoa extract vs placebo for 3.6 years was compared in several thousand healthy volunteers. While the difference in cardiovascular events was non-significant, there was a significant reduction of cardiovascular death in the cocoa group (https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac055)
- Two mechanisms were identified by which cocoa constituents exert beneficial effects on the cardiovascular system: Reduction of platelet reactivity, ultimately decreasing the risk for thrombosis (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1097/SMJ.0b013e31818859eb and https://doi.org/10.1080/0953710031000123681) Improvement of endothelial function, resulting in reduced blood pressure (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1080/07315724.2004.10719361 and https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16172911)
Btw, if you can´t access the publications, try Sci-Hub ;)
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Thanks for the info. I don't have any specific knowledge about these studies but I still have zero trust in them. (Also I'm not knowledgeable enough in study design and methodology to critique these particular ones).
But here's the reason for my zero trust. I was fooled by studies like this for a long time, in many different nutritional areas. However, the studies all had one thing in common - they all pointed to the same direction. Meat and animal is bad, fiber, whole grains, fruit and veggies is good. That's the way the propaganda is going now.
And when I read The Big Fat Surprise (and many other books, but that was the first and most influential), I learned that most of the studies were trash. And studies that showed the opposite were actively suppressed.
And more importantly, when I actually started eating the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the studies recommended, I found my health massively, massively improved. And it didn't even take long.
So bottom line - no faith in these types of studies, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. And that doesn't include chocolate.
;-)
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