Why Chocolate is Not a Health Food--Sigh

I've always loved chocolate--especially dark chocolate. But the recent flurry of stories that chocolate could be some kind of wonder food leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This falls into a category of stories that journalists love to report and consumers love to read: Hey, what you think is bad for you is actually good. (And let's not forget another closely related category: what you think is good for you is actually bad.) This is the kind of story that tells you a lot more about human nature than it does scientific truth.

The latest round of chocoholic wish fulfillment is based on a study by Dr. Norman Hollenberg in the International Journal of Medical Studies (IJMS). In it, Hollenberg and his colleagues assert that the reason why the Kuna Indians of San Blas Island off the coast of Panama seem to suffer from less cancer and heart disease than their counterparts on the mainland is that the Islanders drink five or more cups of cocoa each day.

We're not talking Swiss Miss here. The cocoa is minimally processed from local cocoa plants (and if you've ever tasted real cocoa, you might wonder how they can swallow five cups of the stuff a day--boy, is it bitter!)

But there are plenty of red flags in even the most gleefully credulous press reports of Hollenberg's findings. To start with, we have the "mighty may." Cocoa may--or may not--help prevent cancer and heart disease. Even the authors have this to say about their own study: ". . . there are many risk factors and an observational study cannot provide definitive evidence."

There's also a potential funding bias since the research was supported in part by the Mars company, manufacturer of M&Ms and other fine candies.

Hollenberg is in the radiology department at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Nothing against radiologists but what do they know about nutrition? Yet, in my admittedly unscientific review of the popular press, I found not a single case of a reporter who had contacted a nutrition researcher for comment.

The further I dug into the original research paper in the IMJS, the more questions I had. For example, the investigators compared Kuna Indians on the island to everyone in Panama--not just to Kuna Indians on the mainland. That's like comparing apples to oranges.

Also, the quality of the original data is in question since the causes of death were derived from death certificates that may have been less precise on the island.

And why did more island residents die of infections than those on the mainland? Could that have been the result of drinking too much cocoa?

Well, you get the picture. I love chocolate. I think flavenoids are some of Nature's most important disease-fighting agents. But I eat chocolate--in moderation--because I love its taste, not because I think it's some kind of health food.