The dark truth about chocolate | Hacker News Reader

The dark truth about chocolate

theguardian.com

116 pointsraattgift46 comments

That's a surprisingly in depth newspaper article! Rather than another article about how chocolate is a "superfood", or debunking the "myth" of chocolate, this is a look at how our perceptions of chocolate are affected by industry driven science. The closing paragraphs give a flavor of the piece, telling of an social experiment that I'm surprised I hadn't heard about (or at least don't remember):

The role of the media in helping chocolate makers exploit our failure to grasp the complexities of nutrition science was laid bare in a 2015 exposé. German television journalists set up a three-week “study” in which they asked one group of volunteers to follow a low-carb diet, another to do the same but add a daily chocolate bar, a third to make no change to their diet. Both low-carb groups lost an average of 5lb, but the chocolate group lost weight faster. By measuring 18 different things in a small number of people, the spoofers made it likely they would find “statistically significant” but fake benefits of eating chocolate.

The “peer-reviewed” International Archives of Internal Medicine agreed to publish a hastily written paper within 24 hours of receiving it – for a fee of €600. John Bohannon, a Harvard University biologist and science journalist in on the hoax, put together a press release. Within days stories had been published in more than 20 countries. The Mail Online, Daily Express, Daily Star and Bild were among those that fell for it.

More about how that paper came to be here: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/the_history_behind_the_chocolat...

Guardian is a lovely newspaper. I particularly like the Long Reads, almost always interesting. They have a mailing list for that, and also a weekly news one, both just full of nice, useful content.

The Guardian also made one of the greatest television commercials of all time. If you've seen it, you know the one I'm referring to.

If you haven't, watch it two or three times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3h-T3KQNxU

If anyone here remembers the Software Entrepreneur's Forum that met regularly in the Palo Alto area in the '80s and '90s, Will Hearst gave a talk at one of their meetings and played this commercial as an example of creative marketing. High praise from another newspaperman, and well earned.

Tangentially, Will is also a mathematician and programmer. I don't know how much code he writes these days, but back then he was known to be quite an AWK enthusiast.

I hope this would be the advert where a newspaper repeatedly unfolded to cover an entire city, backed by some funky brass.

The linked ad is much more worthy, but I've always wanted to see the other one again.

Wow, thanks a lot!

The long reads are published as podcasts as well often read by authors.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-audio-long-read

> During the 1990s, scientists became interested in the French paradox – the now discredited observation that heart disease rates were low in France despite a national diet high in saturated fats.

I joined a local Toastmasters club over a year ago. Last week we had a speech from a member who grew up in France, found his way to an engineering university in Florida, and now lives in Arizona. His latest speech told of how he's lived "the French Paradox". A few years ago he went home to visit family. His aunt squeezed his cheek and sweetly said, "You've become a fat American." The rest of the speech was about how this motivated him to return to his old French eating habits -- 5-course meals, small entrees, dairy, desert. He lost 50 pounds. One of the key points he raised was how he makes an effort to avoid most unsaturated oils.

There is no French paradox, because the French are correct to take food more seriously than Americans. That some scientists think there is a "French paradox" just shows how confused they are. IMHO, Ancel Keys' work was really just junk science [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys

French here. I think there are several points in the way we approach food here in France.

There is a long tradition of gastronomy. Not saying we are the only country in the world with a good gastronomy, of course not, but it's in our genes. I think we are one of little peoples that are talking about food when eating. When you eat with other people, there is always a moment when you start talking about a restaurant, or a time, where/when you had a great meal.

We are also obsessed with our traditional meals or food. For example, close to each dairy farm have its sort of cheese. A lot of them will never cross the US border:-) There are moe than 1200 sort of cheese [1] and even protected ones, meaning the recipes and origin are protected by 'law' [2].

And that's also true for ham, delicatessen (and we love those), meat, poultry, and everything coming from unindustrialized farms (or not too much).

That's something we really care about. And because those foods taste something, there is no need to add sugar or other in it.

Of course, that's for the tradition picture. But we also eat junk food, microwaved food (even more since the 70's crisis where working or finding work became harder and harder each year). We just went 3-4 decades eating bad, especially in cities, and the obesity epidemy is somthing real in France too.

Fortunatly there was a wake up call in the middle of the 2000's and more and more people try to come back to less industrialized processed food.

And in conclusion, there's something true for French : we LOVE to eat !

[1] List in French : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_fromages_fran%C3%A7ai... [2] Short list in English : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_cheeses

What is delicatessen? In USA that just means cold cuts of meat.

Delicatessen means the same thing.

"Meat" in Europe, we learnt while we were there, doesn't really mean what it means in the Anglosphere. For us, "meat" groups up and basically means any animal flesh. For them (or at least: France, Spain, Italy), meat, poultry, delicatessen are all different classifications. Push the term "meat" down a layer in your ontology :).

Well I used Google Translate, but I guess it's something like that. The french word is Charcuterie.

I haven't found a website in English, but here some pictures and classification (in french)

http://www.cuisinealafrancaise.com/fr/produits/boucherie-cha...

Searching was also the occasion for me to remember that french gastronomy is since 2010 "Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" :-)

http://us.france.fr/en/information/gastronomic-meal-french-5

We use the French word in the states.

Oh ok ! Learned something, thanks.

I mean, to be fair you’ll also see antipasto, deli tray, meat & cheese board or even in some German influenced communities “vespers”.

But if you say charcuterie you’ll be understood.

Interesting to see Vesper (pronounced Feshper where I live). That's a distinctly southern German term that not even most Germans will use.

I’ve seen it used mostly in small towns in the Midwest that were strongly German immigrant communities.

If you go to the upper Midwest you will similar odd uses of Scandinavian words.

It would not surprise me at all to learn that these communities are using archaic or even incorrect words.

It's correct and not archaic, it's just something very localized in Germany, which I wouldn't necessarily expect a mixed immigrant community to adopt.

The literal translation (from German delikat essen) is 'delicious food'

Gastronomy is undeniably part of the French culture but I think it is seriously declining. France has one of the highest density of Mac Donald's in the world (they are always packed!) and junk food is extremely popular. More than 50% of French people are overweight or obese, and the associated diseases are on the raise.

We have been embracing the US diet in France and we are witnessing the same outcome. However, I would say that French people (and continental Europeans in general) are still more conscious of the food they consume, compared to Brits or Americans. This is personal anecdote (so probably worthless), but I've been surprised in the US to witness "educated" families routinely feed their kids with sodas and chocolate bars. Many French parents would treat those as poison.

The McDonald's are always packed by locals or tourists though? McDonald's across Europe are often hotspots for tourists for the wifi.

They are consistently popular, even in remote places which don't see any tourists. Actually, in some areas, there are very few options to eat out after 9-10pm. I have to admit they are very convenient.

Eating slowly (making a meal an event instead of swallowing as much as possible in 15 minutes before satiation kicks in) and smoking cigarettes are the two easy forms of caloric reduction /appetite suppression. Both are common in France.

I wonder how long before we start seeing studies about the benefits of social media or casual games. "People with more than 500 Facebook friends live up to 2 years longer." "People who spend more than $100/mo on loot boxes find jobs 17% faster."

Just do enough studies and the benefits will show.

> Just do enough studies and the benefits will show.

Indeed, the latest research shows that people who do more than 200 studies get 15% more benefits.

Just reading the nutrition label on my bar of dark chocolate says it has a significant amount of fiber and iron which makes it better than most other desserts. I don't eat it like I'm eating vegetables. I eat it like it's a treat that is better for me than other treats.

In general, I'd be skeptical of positive claims about any single food as a health solution. There might be foods that are especially bad, but even then, there's rarely a situation where one food, if the rest of the diet was "healthy" (generally defining as non-processed and containing variety among fresh ingredients that include whole grains, produce, and proteins), would be problematic in moderation, unless the consumer was allergic to it.

Eating poorly can hurt, but there's not one "simple trick" that can change that. People want some kind of antidote magic bullet to the health issues we have, but food is very unlikely to fill that role. A good article: http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/03/ultimate-conversation-on-h...

Lindt 78% cocoa surely has a positive impact on my mental health. I find one or two squares at a time are enough due to the richness of the flavour.

Is this an advertisement?

Not at all. Just genuinely like it and 78% seems like the “sweet spot” for me. Where the 70% is a little too easy to over eat and the 85% is just too rich, almost as if it’s a different thing, not quite “chocolate”.

What should one do, if one wants to try "what the Aztec's called the food of the gods"?

Find a place where people actually grow cocoa beans. That sound stupid, I know, but I'm not sure there are a lot of place else you can taste raw cocoa.

I once saw a TV report about a chocolate maker in Belgium who bought beans directly and making all the process by himself. Perhaps some other do that ?

I have the chance to live in a carribean island where there's a place where they grow cocoa. So you can test (and taste) it in its raw form.

It's particularly bitter ! And eons from chocolate.

I was the only one in a group of five to appreciate it. But just a sip :-)

Does anyone actually make chocolates from the raw, unfermented beans? Wouldn't it taste pretty bad?

You’re a little off base there. You can in fact make your own chocolate bars at home http://chocolatealchemy.com/

Not an ad, just an anecdote that you don’t have to travel far for raw cocao.

>>You can in fact make your own chocolate bars at home

And it isn't that difficult really. There are lots of places you can get raw cacao from and recipes for chocolate bars are actually quite simple. The best part about making your own chocolate bars is that you can experiment with how much sugar, almonds, and cinnamon to add. Roast the almonds and cacao beans to your liking, crush them all together until you get a nice dough texture and voila! Chocolate.

A good approximation is high quality drinking chocolate (not hot chocolate). Melted very dark chocolate with a minimum of sugar and milk or cream added. You can find it at fancy chocolate places.

May I suggest Taza: https://www.tazachocolate.com/ It is the closest mass-market brand I've found in the States to what one can make by hand from raw beans, and it is absolutely delicious, either in bar, or drinking chocolate form.

Chocolate keeps me regular.

TL;DR: Most heath claims done by scientific studies are fake

It's amusing to see a British paper attacking the health benefits of dark chocolate, given what they sell as "chocolate" in stores. After having had unfortunate opportunities to try it, I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Was this before or after Kraft did a hostile takeover of Cadbury? I'll grant that Cadbury was never as good as European chocolate, but after Kraft the quality took a nosedive.

Both. Indeed. My frames of reference are Swiss dark chocolates and pralinés.

Which brands? if you have only ever eaten Cadburys going to a 70+% cocoa might be an unusual taste, and in America big brand chocolate is even more adulterated than it is in the UK

Comparison of th ingredients of Cadury's Dairy Milk in the UK vs US [0]:

> According to a 2007 report in The New York Times, a British bar contained (in order) of milk, sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, vegetable fat and emulsifiers, whilst the American version manufactured by Hershey started its ingredients list with sugar. It also listed lactose, emulsifier soy lecithin, and “natural and artificial flavorings".

Cadbury's is typically the cheapest brand of chocolate in the UK. The UK got an exception from EU law to create a new type of 'family milk chocolate' that only contains 20% cocoa solids instead of 25% as is required in the rest of the EU to call something milk chocolate [1]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadbury_Dairy_Milk#Ingredients...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_chocolate#Types

Sorry I only remember Cadbury's but there were other brands. As for taste in the UK and America, for the American market Lindt chose to adulterate their standard Excellence recipes to adjust to local preferences; consequently some of their dark chocolates sold in the US became inedible monstrosities.

To the downvoters: what is generally sold as "chocolate" in British grocery stores is at best similar to moldy sandwich bread one would try to pass of as "croissant" (assuming you know what a fresh, French croissant is like; if you don't, you have no business passing judgment on qualities of croissant, chocolate, or comments on those).

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