<story><title>The dark truth about chocolate</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/25/chocolate-the-dark-truth-is-it-good-for-you-health-wellbeing-blood-pressure-flavanols</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nkurz</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a surprisingly in depth newspaper article!  Rather than another article about how chocolate is a &amp;quot;superfood&amp;quot;, or debunking the &amp;quot;myth&amp;quot; of chocolate, this is a look at how our perceptions of chocolate are affected by industry driven science.  The closing paragraphs give a flavor of the piece, telling of an social experiment that I&amp;#x27;m surprised I hadn&amp;#x27;t heard about (or at least don&amp;#x27;t remember):&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The role of the media in helping chocolate makers exploit our failure to grasp the complexities of nutrition science was laid bare in a 2015 exposé. German television journalists set up a three-week “study” in which they asked one group of volunteers to follow a low-carb diet, another to do the same but add a daily chocolate bar, a third to make no change to their diet. Both low-carb groups lost an average of 5lb, but the chocolate group lost weight faster. By measuring 18 different things in a small number of people, the spoofers made it likely they would find “statistically significant” but fake benefits of eating chocolate.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The “peer-reviewed” International Archives of Internal Medicine agreed to publish a hastily written paper within 24 hours of receiving it – for a fee of €600. John Bohannon, a Harvard University biologist and science journalist in on the hoax, put together a press release. Within days stories had been published in more than 20 countries. The Mail Online, Daily Express, Daily Star and Bild were among those that fell for it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;More about how that paper came to be here:  &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cjr.org&amp;#x2F;analysis&amp;#x2F;the_history_behind_the_chocolate_hoax.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cjr.org&amp;#x2F;analysis&amp;#x2F;the_history_behind_the_chocolat...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The dark truth about chocolate</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/25/chocolate-the-dark-truth-is-it-good-for-you-health-wellbeing-blood-pressure-flavanols</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>taxicabjesus</author><text>&amp;gt; During the 1990s, scientists became interested in the French paradox – the now discredited observation that heart disease rates were low in France despite a national diet high in saturated fats.&lt;p&gt;I joined a local Toastmasters club over a year ago. Last week we had a speech from a member who grew up in France, found his way to an engineering university in Florida, and now lives in Arizona. His latest speech told of how he&amp;#x27;s lived &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;the French Paradox&amp;quot;.&lt;/i&gt; A few years ago he went home to visit family. His aunt squeezed his cheek and sweetly said, &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;ve become a fat American.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt; The rest of the speech was about how this motivated him to return to his old French eating habits -- 5-course meals, small entrees, dairy, desert. He lost 50 pounds. One of the key points he raised was how he makes an effort to avoid most unsaturated oils.&lt;p&gt;There is no French paradox, because the French are correct to take food more seriously than Americans. That some scientists think there is a &amp;quot;French paradox&amp;quot; just shows how confused they are. IMHO, Ancel Keys&amp;#x27; work was really just junk science [0].&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ancel_Keys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ancel_Keys&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>