Eating Chocolate Good for Your Body Mass Index

[pioneer]

More frequent eating of chocolate was linked to lower body mass index (BMI), according to a research published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Consumption of certain types of chocolate has been linked to some favorable metabolic associations with blood pressure, insulin sensitivity and cholesterol level. However, because chocolate can be a calorie-laden sweet there are concerns about eating it.

Lead author Beatrice Golomb and her colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, studied 1,018 men and women without known cardiovascular disease, diabetes or extremes of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels who were screened for participation in a clinical study examining noncardiac effects of statins.

To measure chocolate consumption, 1,017 of the participants answered a question about how many times per week they ate chocolate, and 975 of them completed a food frequency questionnaire. BMI was calculated for 972 of the participants.

"Adults who consumed chocolate more frequently had a lower BMI than those who consumed chocolate less often," the authors note. That was still the case after researchers accounted for participants' age and gender, as well as how much they exercised.

The effect worked out to a five- to seven-pound difference between people who ate five servings of chocolate per week compared to those who didn't eat any, according to Golomb.

However, it was only how often people ate chocolate, rather than the total amount they ate regularly, that was linked to their weight, the study team reported.

"Our findings, that more frequent chocolate intake is linked to lower BMI, are intriguing," the authors conclude. "A randomized trial of chocolate for metabolic benefits in humans may be merited." - source: PNA

[islander]

Chocolate products are often rich in sugar and fat, contributing to assumptions that chocolate boosts BMI. This study does not obviate the possibility that some chocolate-containing products do so, that some chocolate consumption profiles do so, or that for some people, even frequent modest chocolate consumption does so. Moreover, since findings are cross-sectional, causality in the observed association cannot be presumed. However, the finding fits with the literature suggesting benefits of chocolate for other metabolic factors, and they failed to identify a link of chocolate to key BMI-relevant confounders in a direction to explain the finding. (http://thinksteroids.com/)

yikes.  technical writing of sorts, though the piece is sincere and isn't out to confuse.  to try to translate to english... 

chocolates are thought to increase weight because they often contain sugar and fat. 

the study does not remove this possibility of weight increase. 

the cause (chocolate consumption) and effect (lower bmi) observed in the results cannot just be taken as true without more proof because the study covers a representative set of a population (which is different from a random set). 

but the findings fit with existing write-ups about the advantages of chocolate to other fat-burning functions.

the study fails to link the findings to key bmi processes in a way that could explain the results.

 

en ader words, wa pa kuno niy klaro.