Chocolate Research: Worst Study of the Week

New research suggests that regular consumption of chocolate may weaken bone density and strength, which in turn could increase the risk of health problems such as osteoporosis and fracture.
According to the study, published this month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, women who eat chocolate daily have an overall bone density 3.1 per cent lower than those who consume it less than once a week.

Already, the media is reporting things like this statement found on the normally smart Nutraingredients website: The findings will surely come as a blow to the positive image of dark chocolate, often feted for having its heart-healthy properties.

Why is this the dumbest study ever done? Because- I hope you're sitting down- the researchers didn't bother to distinguish among the types of chocolate consumed!

Yes, you heard right. So what the researchers essentially found was that women who eat candy on a daily basis have weaker bones than those who don't. There was absolutely no distinction made between a Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar (which has virtually no protective flavanols) and an 80% cocoa dark chocolate treat.

This is why people go nuts when they hear nutrition research and feel like experts don't know what they're talking about. Many studies say chocolate is great (for lowering blood pressure among other things) and now this study says it's bad. No wonder the public gets confused.

But the truth is, they're using the word chocolate to talk about two entirely different substances. A candy bar with tons of sugar, wax, emulsifiers, chocolate flavoring and no naturally occurring phenols to speak of is not the chocolate we mean when we talk about high cocoa dark chocolate, even though these researchers didn't seem to notice the difference, and referred to both of them as "chocolate".

Since the researchers didn't bother to find out, let me venture a wild guess. The ladies in this study were not consuming 70% cocoa dark chocolate daily, they were eating candy bars. Just a wild guess.

The results of this study should have been reported this way: Sugar contributes to weak bones.

This study actually has nothing to do with the kind of chocolate I wrote about in The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, and that you've correctly heard is a very healthy food. It has to do with candy and sugar. It's unbelievable that the researchers didn't know enough to distinguish the two.

HOOKED ON JUNK: Eating during pregnancy

What you eat while you're pregnant may actually set the tone for your children's health habits. When researchers at the Royal Veterinary College in the U.K. fed pregnant rats the equivalent of rat junk food, their babies were born craving the bad stuff. They also ate twice as many calories as baby rats whose mothers weren't fed the junk food.

Many investigations of conditions from ADD to aggression to cognition problems and thinking have shown a connection to low levels of omega-3 fats. I think taking a high quality essential fatty acid supplement is one of the most important things a woman can do while she's pregnant. Your baby's brain is about 60% fat, most of it DHA one of the important omega-3 fats found in fish and supplements.

Moral of the story: when you're pregnant, you really are eating for two. If it's something you wouldn't feed to your baby, don't eat too much of it. What you eat- and don't eat- while pregnant matters a lot!

Exercise for weight loss? Yes and no..

Exercise alone rarely helps people lose much weight.

This politically incorrect truth makes a lot of people very unhappy, but that doesn't mean it's not so.

Does that mean you shouldn't exercise? Hardly.

Exercise does three things that are absolutely vital to your health.

1) It completely, demonstrably, statistically, provably lowers your risk of dying from all causes including but not limited to heart disease- and as a bonus, may lower your risk for dementia and Alzheimers.

2) It insures that you will keep weight off once you lose it. Maintaining weight loss without exercise is virtually impossible- shown in study after study.

3) It has a profound effect on mood and well-being.

So it's not that exercise isn't important for weight loss- it's just that it's usually not enough by itself. It's also becoming increasingly clear that there are some people for whom a simple (dare I say simplistic) recommendation of diet and exercise alone may not be enough for weight loss, but that's a subject for another day.

Meanwhile, how do you stay "motivated" if you're exercising and not seeing an immediate fall in weight?

My good friend Gina Lombardi has written a terrific article on MSN on five alternative ways to measure progress (besides using the scale). The techniques are smart, easy, and highly motivating.

If you want the executive summary, it's this:

1. Measure your body fat

2. Keep a log (Gina explains how to do this in the article)

3. Use a pedometer (ditto)

4. Check and evaluate your sleep (is it better than it used to be?)

5. Use a heart rate monitor

I'll write more about the relationship between exercise and fitness (and about "smart exercising" in general) in the coming year.

B vitamins and colorectal cancer

Increased intake of vitamin B6 from dietary and supplements may reduce the risk of colorectal cancer by over 20 per cent, suggests a large Scottish study.

Almost 5,000 people took part in the study, which reported a dose-dependent link between intake of the vitamin and the risk of colorectal cancer, report the researchers in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention.

The study, by researchers from the University of Edinburgh, Western General Hospital (Edinburgh) and the University of Aberdeen, adds to an ever growing body of science supporting the potential colorectal benefits of higher intake of the
B vitamins.


After adjusting the results for potentially confounding factors such as age, sex, location of the tumour, folate status, and certain genotypes, lead author Evropi Theodoratou reported: "Moderately strong inverse and dose-dependent associations in the whole sample were found between CRC risk and the intake of dietary and total vitamin B6."

Translated: No matter how you slice and dice the data, vitamin B6 seems to play an important role in preventing colorectal cancer.

Furthermore, a meta-analysis of published studies supported these results, wrote the researchers. High vitamin B6 intakes were reported to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer by 19 per cent. The protective effect was found to be higher among 55-year-old individuals (1,001 cases compared to 1,010 controls), they added.

In earlier research in the Journal of Nutrition (Vol. 137, pp. 2701-2708), Tufts researchers stated that moderate deficiency of folate, B2, B6 and B12 together may promote the risk of DNA damage and increase the risk of colorectal cancers.

Mild depletion of all four of these B vitamins seems to promote the risk of tumour formation.

Previously, studies have suggested that folate deficiency alone may promote the risk of colorectal cancer. The new research suggests a more complex interaction.

Bottom line: get all your B's. Especially as we age, B12 absorption is compromised. Vegans and vegetarians are at increased risk for less than optimal B12 deficiencies, despite what you may have read. And as an added bonus, three of these vitamins- B6, B12 and folate- work together to bring down homocysteine, a nasty inflammatory molecule in the blood. High levels of homocysteine are associated with significantly increased risk for heart attack, stroke and Alzheimer's.

Added benefit: Since stress depletes the B vitamins like nobody's business, many people just plain feel better on extra B-complex.

Heart and Soul

Researchers reported Monday that chronic anxiety can significantly increase the risk of a heart attack, at least in men.

The findings add another trait to a growing list of psychological profiles linked to heart disease, including anger or hostility, Type A behavior, and depression.

"There's a connection between the heart and head," said Dr. Nieca Goldberg of the New York University School of Medicine, a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association who wasn't involved in the study.

The research was published Monday by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

In preparation for my upcoming February interview on "Oprah and Friends" (XM Radio) which is hosted by the great Dr. Mehmet Oz, I re-read his superb book, "Healing from the Heart". It's a beautiful, personal recounting of how he personally discovered the ways that heart health is intimately related to everything else in our life.

I'm giving a lecture on "Nutrition and the Heart" for the Evanstown Northwestern Healthcare Group in Chicago next month, and the first thing I plan to say is this: "Keeping the heart healthy is only partly about what you put into your body. It's also about what you put into your mind and soul".

This study is just one more piece of evidence for the truth of that statement.

Milk and Prostate Cancer

The relationship between milk and prostate cancer has long been troubling, despite the dairy industry's attempt to get you to think that your health is dependent on you're drinking three glasses a day of the stuff.



In nine- count 'em, nine- separate studies, the strongest and most consistent dietary factor linked with prostate cancer was high consumption of milk or dairy products, says Walter Willet, MD, PhD, Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. At first lots of folks blamed the old boogeyman of diet, saturated fat. Then there was concern that it wasn't the dairy products, but rather too much calcium (without enough vitamin D). Why? Because too much calcium acts as to prevent vitamin D from doing it's anti-cancer work of acting like a brake on the growth of cancer cells.



Two new studies point the finger back at homogenized, pasteurized milk itself. In a study involving 82,483 men over the course of about 10 years, researchers found that there was absolutely no evidence that calcium increased the risk of prostate cancer. They also found that the consumption of skim milk or low-fat milk did. (Why whole milk had the opposite effect is a bit of a mystery).



I've spoken to a lot of researchers off the record, and many suspect- though they can't prove yet- that the hormones in commercial milk may have something to do with it's troubling association with both prostate cancer and acne.



Who knows? Meanwhile, I'm sticking with raw, certified, organic milk which unfortunately you can only get in two states. I've never been a fan of homogenized pasteurized milk, and think we can do just fine without it. We certainly don't need three glasses a day.



And consider this: the countries with the highest milk consumption also have the highest osteoporosis rates. You don't need milk to prevent bone loss- just an adequate intake of all the right minerals and vitamins (including vitamin D!) and some good weight bearing exercise!

Good Food More Expensive?

A new study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Assocation- not an organization I'm usually very fond of- has found that healthy food is becoming more expensive nationally, while junk food is becoming cheaper.

The average price of the lowest-calorie foods- like, for example, tomatoes, berries and green veggies- went up by almost 20 percent over 2 years. Meanwhile, there was a slight dip in the cost of potato chips, cookies and candy.

Researchers are speculating that this is one reason why obesity rates are soaring among the poorest Americans.

I think there are a lot of reasons why obesity rates are soaring, and this may in fact be one of them, but its not the only one. Education about health is a factor, as is access to good food (think school cafeterias or the absence of fresh produce in a lot of poorer neighborhoods). And so is what psychologists call "modeling"; if some sports and music stars started showing up in commercials eating vegetables, and calling chips and fries "food for losers" you'd see a shift in the nations eating habits faster than you could can say "American Idol".

Getting good food on the plates of Americans in reasonable portions requires a complete overhaul of our national psyche when it comes to food and its relationship to health. Want to fix the health care system? Start by gutting the farm bill which pays farmers to grow wheat, corn, soybeans and rice, food which winds up being the core of enough junk food to pack the Mall of America food court hundreds of times over.

As Michael Pollan wrote in the NY Times, "Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water".

So does the cheapness of junk food make eating for life, energy and health more difficult? Eating well takes a change in attitude first and foremost. But if we are going to subsidize food, it wouldn't hurt if we made kale and berries and nuts at least as cheap and easy to get as boxes of mac and cheese.

Omega 3's and Alzheimers

Losing your mind is one of the greatest fears of everyone born after 1946 (which includes me, Bill Clinton and George Bush, by the way).

Most of us have witnessed firsthand the devastation that can happen when "senior moments" morph into full blown cluelessness and ultimately dementia or Alheimers- which, by the way, though technically different conditions, look very much the same to an outsider.

Protecting our memory and brain function is- or should be- a major concern for everyone. It's what makes us who we are. Losing our abilities to think, reason, laugh, remember, recognize and recall is in a very real sense losing who we are. Losing our self.

Today, yet another study came out showing the potential benefit of omega-3 for brain function. In this study, increased intake of the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) boosted the production of a protein known to destroy the plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease.

Currently, about 12 million people in the US plus the EU suffer from Alzheimer's, with some estimates predicting this figure will have tripled by 2050. The direct and indirect cost of Alzheimer care is over 100 billion dollars in the US alone. And this doesn't even touch the emotional and spiritual cost, especially to caretakers and survivors.

The current study adds to a monumental body of research showing the importance of omega 3 fatty acids- particularly DHA and EPA- for brain health, mood, cognition and cardiovascular health.

I'm asked a lot on radio shows and interviews "what's the most important supplement to take?".

It's a hard question to answer, but if pressed, I think I'd answer fish oil. The omega-3's in high quality fish oil are just that important and make that much of a difference.