The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by lokerfoi » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:44 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #16

JosephLark wrote: post #9

> “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.

75% is pretty standard in Europe. I've tried a couple of 99% cocoa chocolates too, but these are really for the hardcore lovers (gets glued to the teeth and other taste issues).

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

#22

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:44 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #4

sna1l wrote: 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...

Society either has to fund more researchers with more money and accept the ramifications of that or accept companies funding their own interests. The same applies to campaign funding.

This seems like a more serious answer to me.

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

#23

Post by colordrops » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:44 PM UTC

I noticed a while ago how every three months or so a new big study would be at the top of google news about how great coffee is for you. I decided one time to dig into the sources and of course the study was funded by a coffee industry consortium.

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

#24

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:45 PM UTC

norswap wrote: post #15

sp332 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

The latest research seems to claim that fat has been unfairly maligned and you should actually be eating more of it.

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

#25

Post by ianai » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:47 PM UTC

BFatts wrote: post #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 "B…

The only alternative is public funding.

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

#26

Post by trendia » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:48 PM UTC

BFatts wrote: post #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 "B…

Suppose that cocoa does not have direct effects on health. Recruit 60 people, give 30 of them cocoa and 30 of them placebo.

Due to random chance, you'll sometimes get positive results, and sometimes get negative results. If all of those studies are published, then there isn't a huge problem -- a metastudy would show that on average cocoa doesn't affect health.

But instead, support that only the positive studies are published. A third party reviewing the relevant literature will assume that all studies conducted showed a positive result, when in fact they were only the studies that were published.

This is the problem with having sponsored research: the research itself can be done properly, but a bias in publishing can give an inaccurate view of the true science at hand.

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

#27

Post by drak0n1c » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:48 PM UTC

BFatts wrote: post #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 "B…

Just like how "big business" has a motivation to fund certain types of research, people in media have ideological and business motivations for only investigating certain types of organizations and people.

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

#28

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:49 PM UTC

BFatts wrote: post #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 "B…

If only there were some sort of organization that was not driven by profit and had the ability to allocate the entire society's resources toward the common good.

And incidentally I'd say a big part of the problem is that the research is totally misleading.

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

#29

Post by rhizome » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:50 PM UTC

BFatts wrote: post #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 "B…

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so.

Ask yourself why this is so. Could it have to do with a reduction in public investment in original research, or, alternatively, an overall reduction in investment in unencumbered research?

Point being: this work used to get done by non-corporate scientists, too.

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

#30

Post by jesperlang » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 7:54 PM UTC

some random thoughts:

these companies benefit from _vague_ terms like "chocolate" and exploit customer's pre-conceived notion of what these terms actually mean.

Of course no scientific study is going to find that Mars/snickers bars are good for you. The trick is to make sure the good result from cocoa bean studies gets linked to your Mars/snickers/product. So the process might look like this..

1. A compound in raw cocoa bean is found to help blood levels

2. Cocoa powder is made from cocoa beans, therefor cocoa powder is healthy

3. Chocolate with high cocoa powder content should also be healthy

4. "Chocolate" is healthy

5. Mars/snickers is chocolate right? Therefor these products are also healthy.

Posts on health blogs, marketing campaigns, etc. water down the results from (1) and draw their own conclusions, and there you go. People go out and by all kinds of chocolate products.

Similar stuff happen with things like green tea (super healthy, but your sugar drenched matcha latte is not), fruits and vegetables in general. A "productized" version of these raw foods is easier to control and cheaper than the real deal. That's the sad reality I guess.

edit: Key take... it's not that sponsored studies are necessarily misleading or "fake". It's the purpose of exploiting the key results of the study by somehow linking them with your product in a positive way!