Don’t Trifle With Chocolate

According to ABC News, the consumption of chocolate is good for the heart.  Five of seven studies of over 114,000 people linked HIGH CHOCOLATE CONSUMPTION with a 37% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk, and a 31% reduction in stroke risk, when compared to low chocolate consumption.

Well, you can toss that broccoli out the window and grab the nearest bag of Kit Kats.

“Although over-consumption can have harmful effects, the existing studies generally agree on a potential beneficial association of chocolate consumption with a lower risk of cardiometabolic disorders,” Adriana Buitrago-Lopez of the University of Cambridge in the U.K. and colleagues reported today in the prestigious British Medical Journal.

A female reporter, sent to find out what, exactly, Adriana meant by “harmful effects,” found her at home in her kitchen, in the process of polishing off an entire tray of double fudge brownies.

“Mjoof thugf jzurgle chorn,” Dr Buitrago-Lopez explained, until she started to choke on a walnut.  She ran to the bathroom and when she returned, the reporter was gone, along with the remainder of the contents of the brownie pan and a container of chocolate syrup from the refrigerator.

Seven studies linked high chocolate consumption with a 29 percent reduction in stroke risk compared to low chocolate consumption.  But wait.  The report goes on to say that chocolate, itself, didn’t necessarily make people healthier.

“This paper merely shows us that the association between habitual intake of chocolate and lower cardiometabolic risk is ‘statistically robust,'” said Dr. David Katz, director of medical studies in public health at Yale University. “But what if happier people eat more chocolate, and are at lower cardiometabolic risk because they are happier? This paper cannot address such subtleties.”

While those who read Dr Katz’s statement applauded him for his use of such creative phrases such as “cardiometabolic risk” and “statistically robust,” they failed to see that it mattered as much as the ongoing dispute of whether dark chocolate or milk chocolate tasted better or how long a human being could survive on a diet consisting entirely of Lindt chocolate truffles.

Katz continued, “The large numbers don’t prove cause and effect.”  It is believed he also used the phrase “in moderation,” and some drivel like “too much of a good thing being no longer a good thing.”  Katz, said the next step was to establish a therapeutic window similar to that for red wine.  Most members of the audience were by then not listening, as they had declared their own therapeutic levels of both wine and chocolate and were passing around bottles of Pinot Noir and large bags of Hershey’s miniatures.

In addition to being published on the British Medical Journal website,  the findings were presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Paris and the annual Hershey, Pennsylvania Chocolate Festival.