Can Dark Chocolate Keep the Holiday Pounds Down?

by Maggie Vink (Subscribe to Maggie Vink's posts)
Dec 12th 2008 12:00PM

I love this kind of news. I don't really believe it ... but I love it. Apparently, eating a little dark chocolate can help you keep your weight down.

In one study, 16 men participated in two sessions. In the first, participants ate dark chocolate after fasting for 12 hours. Then, they reported on their appetite for the next five hours. In the next session, they repeated the experiment with milk chocolate. In both sessions, two and a half hours after eating the chocolate, the men were instructed to eat as much pizza as necessary to make them comfortably full. (Chocolate and pizza? Where can I sign up?) The men ate less pizza after eating dark chocolate than after eating milk chocolate. Researchers felt the findings were significant and reported that the men felt like eating less sweet, salty and fatty foods after having dark chocolate.

I don't know. Sounds too good to be true to me. On the other hand, a small amount of dark chocolate can actually be good for your health. So if you want to have an ounce or two a few hours before eating, then give it a try.

Source

Comments (2)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

u262f 12-12-2008 @ 5:13PM

Did the chocolate growers organization fund the experiment? The experiment does not justify the conclusion at all! If they wanted to test whether dark chocolate suppresses the appetite, they needed to test men who had eaten nothing ahead of time and men who had eaten other items ahead of time as well. From this experiment as stated, the only conclusion that can be made is merely that milk chocolate causes people's appetite to increase more than dark chocolate. Both items might've made the men hungrier than they would've been if they were only given pizza without having had any chocolate at all. Furthermore, both types of chocolate might've made the men hungrier than they would've been if they had carrots sticks instead of chocolate, but the experiment (as reported) doesn't seem to test that (or anything reasonable) at all. I can't believe this is passing for science. This experiment is at the level of something I would expect from a child in elementary school.