7 ms·
This sounds extremely confounded by lifestyle, socioeconomic status, and overall diet. The kinds of people who eat dark chocolate are clearly a self-selected bu
by jey 2y ago
This sounds extremely confounded by lifestyle, socioeconomic status, and overall diet. The kinds of people who eat dark chocolate are clearly a self-selected bunch of outliers. Even though they tried to correct for some of these covariates, I'm personally going to take these results with a pinch of salted chocolate.
To be fair, the authors do acknowledge these limitations of their methodology, and these kinds of studies are a useful part of the overall enterprise of science to explore and propose hypotheses.
> First, we cannot entirely rule out the role of confounding in our observed associations. We controlled for multiple lifestyle and dietary covariates that might confound the associations of interest, although residual or unmeasured confounding, or both, may still exist owing to the observational nature of the analysis.
Regardless, I'll go ahead and take this finding as a further justification to keep eating dark chocolate.
- mrsilencedogood 2y agoI'm also suspect for similar reasons, but this at least seems consistent with lots of other stuff we're finding out about the random things humanity has been imbibing for millennia (coffee, tea, cacao, etc). Anything that's anti-inflammatory seems to help fix a lot of stuff, as long as whatever you do to get that anti-inflammatory effect doesn't have too many downsides. For instance, I wonder if we'll eventually find an NSAID that isn't hard on the liver, and low doses end up in things like vitamins. (My understanding is that that's the main reason you can't just constantly take small doses of advil - the marginal positive effects of reduced inflammation are outweighed by your kidneys and liver being made to constantly work harder).
- akira2501 2y agoTo arrive at a conclusion which suggests you should always just add a fixed amount of some substance to your diet seems generally flawed to me. It treats bodies like they're all average machines with fixed inputs and predictable results and zero emergent properties. If wonder if we'll eventually improve genetic and blood testing to the point where everyone can have customized daily information to help them make the best individual choice.
- FriedPickles 2y agoHopefully there will be a follow up RCT. I volunteer for the test group.
- fire_lake 2y agoDark chocolate often has very high sugar levels. You might try to self correct but corporations are always on your heels.
- WoodenChair 2y ago> Dark chocolate often has very high sugar levels. Milk chocolate usually has higher sugar levels than dark chocolate.
- RankingMember 2y agoIf you're going to eat chocolate, dark has by far the lowest sugar content among chocolate types.
- bruce343434 2y agoThat's whataboutism. There's still a lot of sugar in it. Additionally, chocolate often has a high amount of heavy metals in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzWWOQMLttE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzWWOQMLttE I like chocolate as much as the next guy, but personally my skin always starts itching all over (inflammation!) and breaking out in acneic pustules on the chin, be it dark, milk, cacao powder, whatever. It's the same reaction I get from other high sugar content candy.
- RankingMember 2y ago> That's whataboutism. The discussion is about chocolate in general, so noting that one form of chocolate is much lower in sugar than another is hardly "whataboutism".
- ricardobeat 2y agoThis is always the top comment on these studies, but come on, it’s a medical journal. As you already pointed out they did adjust for confounding factors, you simply cannot exclude them completely with a single study.
- Projectiboga 2y agoYes, this also measures how well of these individuals are as Chocolate is a luxury product. This needs to be examined sorting into economic cohorts.