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The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

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Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#11
post #5

> 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 i…

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

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#14
post #2

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...

Better bibliographic metadata and links, recording authorship, funding and affiliation. This is what organisations like Crossref (where I work), DataCite, ORCID etc are trying to do. Setting standards for, collecting and making available this information makes joining the dots and scrutiny easier.

If you're interested in this kind of thing I recommend PIDapaloooza conference. https://pidapalooza.org

(Posting in a personal capacity)

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#15
post #11
post #5

> 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 i…

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

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).

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#16

> “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…

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

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

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#17
> "... 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/... [2] http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Map/Nestle

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#18

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.

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

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#19
post #2

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...

Stop perpetuating the cultural idea that 'anything white collar is OK as long as you do it for money.' The corrupt researchers should be left without a job, just as, say, a food truck worker who plotted to intentionally profit from selling expired products would be fired and criminally charged. In both cases the actors are unethically profiting from your misfortune.

Surely it is primarily the organization which deserves censure, rather than individuals operating within the system. Unless you basically want to lock up entire fields' worth of scientists I don't see how individual responsibility is a solution.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#20
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.

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