Eat More Chocolate! -Roger Mason

Recently this column criticized poor old Stephen Sinatra for telling his readers to eat more chocolate in his newsletter Heart Health & Nutrition. He told them eating chocolate would make them healthier. Wouldn't it be nice if chocolate really was good for us and we could eat chocolate every day? Doesn't everybody like chocolate? He even quoted a published study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 
 
Actually reading the original study (volume 74) of AJCN showed us what the researchers really said. This was done on real people at  Pennsylvania State University using both cocoa powder and dark chocolate. They claimed dark chocolate has healthful effects on our cholesterol and prostaglandins (prostaglandins are complex fatty acids that help in such processes as blood clotting, but, in excess, cause inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.) The scientists at PSU claimed that dark chocolate contains powerful and beneficial procyanidins, flavones, and polyphenols. They said these can increase our antioxidant capacity, raise our good HDL cholesterol, and lower the bad LDL cholesterol's ability to oxidize. Isn't this great folks? Chocolate is therefore good for us, and we can eat as much as we want! They only gave their subjects a mere 38 grams of chocolate a day, but shouldn't we indulge and eat even more? All this time we've avoided chocolate, being under the illusion is wasn't good for us. We've suffered and deprived ourselves all these years for nothing. We should  trumpet the good news to the world to eat all the chocolate you want. Let's put this on the cover of Time magazine. Now, a real human clinical study in a major medical journal from an established university has shown us the health benefits of chocolate. 

Stephen is a real piece of garbage. He sells useless 25 mg X 30 capsules of CoQ10 for

$28. We sell you EIGHT times as much (100 mg X 60) for $25. He sells crap like Potence for sexual performance and impotence for $25 full of useless muira puama and wild oats. The list of overpriced crap is rather long. 
 
Who eats the most chocolate on earth? The Dutch do, those fine people over there in Holland. Now some of you cynics out there may want to want to bring up the fact the Dutch are some of the unhealthiest people in the world. They have stratospheric rates of various cancers, all kinds of heart and artery disease, arthritis, diabetes, and God knows what other disease. Maybe they aren't eating enough chocolate. Maybe that's the  problem.  
 
In this study at PSU twenty-three healthy people were given cocoa powder and dark chocolate along with a typical American diet. The controls were given the same diet, but deprived of eating any chocolate for a month. Very sophisticated parameters were measured after the four weeks to see what had changes had occurred in both groups. The doctors found that the powerful chocolate procyanidins, polyphenols, and flavones had some very beneficial effects, especially on  cholesterol metabolism and other blood measurements.. Coronary heart disease is the number one killer in America and Europe and  our cholesterol level is the most important predictive factor of all for CHD. 
 
They summarized the results, "The present study showed favorable effects of cocoa powder and dark chocolate consumption on LDL oxidation susceptibility and ORAC in serum. Consequently, these results may indicate a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease when changes in the susceptibility and extent of LDL oxidation are implicated as causative factors. The incorporation of dark chocolate and cocoa powder in a diet that is rich in other food sources of antioxidants- such as fruit, vegetables, tea and wine, results in a high antioxidant intake and may consequently reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease." Isn't this great? Wow, we can live longer and be healthier and suffer from less heart  and artery disease just by eating more chocolate! What wonderful news. 
 
Oh my God! Hold on.....let's read the small print Oh, no! This is just a paid ad from the American Cocoa Research Institute to get you to eat more chocolate. This isn't a real study at all, but just a purchased space for an advertisement by the cocoa institute. Chocolate really is bad for our health. Sinatra really is a moron. It's just a paid ad in a journal folks, not a real study at all.