Why Is There Always New Research on Chocolate?
Do you have a vague idea of chocolate, perhaps dark chocolate, as good for you? It’s good for your heart health or something. On some level, you know that candy is not actually healthy food, but it looks like there is always a headline saying that it is.
Some great Vox reporting explains where that impression came from: decades of Mars-funded research. ( Nestlé and the American Chocolate Association also contributed.)
Even if science is completely reliable, the structure of research funding can end up misleading us. There are several ways:
- If more money is available for research on chocolate than for other areas of research, more scientists will conduct research on chocolate.
- Even if the chocolate companies don’t edit the results, they can still provide funding to scientists whose previous work made chocolate look good.
- They can offer funding for the questions they want answered. For example, they will allocate funding for research on the benefits of chocolate, but hardly allocate for research on the harm.
- When the study is published, they will be sure to send out a press release.
This isn’t just a problem with chocolate. For example, if you see research touting health benefits of cranberries, it is almost always funded by Ocean Spray. If we are talking about eggs, then probably about the American Egg Board . You get the idea. Meanwhile, who is funding the research on how horrible this single food orientation is for public understanding of nutrition? About nobody.
Most of the research is not innovative or even practical; “Chocolate” research usually involves feeding mice or humans a cocoa bean supplement that you definitely wouldn’t eat for fun. The Vox report states that a “heart-healthy” dose of flavanols will require you to eat 2.5 lbs of milk chocolate. Dark chocolate is more concentrated, but you still need a 750 calorie serving. It’s not quite that you could eat a healthy diet every day.