Chocolate has antioxidants but is that a good thing?

Chocolate is a perennial favorite as a health topic. Readers are eager to learn of medical research that justifies something they want to do anyway.

WebMD recently ran an article called “Is Chocolate the Next Super Food?” The excuse for this particular article was a study that found the antioxidant activity of dark chocolate was higher than that of various “super” fruits (blueberry, acai, cranberry, pomegranate).

The article’s very last paragraph did mention — very casually — that the number of calories and fat grams in a serving of dark chocolate exceeds those of fruit juice. There was nothing but praise, however, for the ability of the antioxidants in chocolate to fight free radicals. The wisdom of the widespread consumption of antioxidants has recently been questioned. Getting the word out on that subject may prove awkward for WebMD, a site littered with ads for antioxidant supplements.

Free radicals fight toxins and cancer

Health and science journalist Sharon Begley had an excellent article on antioxidants and free radicals – “Antioxidants Fall From Grace” – in a recnt Newsweek. (emphasis added)

For years the media, food labels, dietitians, and even scientists who should know better have bombarded us with advice to load up on antioxidants: compounds found (mostly) in fruits and vegetables that mop up free radicals, which are highly reactive clusters of atoms that have been fingered as the evildoers responsible for aging and for illnesses from cancer to heart disease.

Not so fast. First, studies piled up showing that taking antioxidants—even such common and seemingly innocuous ones as beta carotene and vitamins C and E—as supplements was not beneficial to health and might even be dangerous, though the reason for the danger wasn’t clear. (One always pays attention when a study concludes with a phrase like “seems to increase overall mortality.”) Now the research is challenging an even more fundamental tenet of the antioxidant craze. Many of the free radicals that are neutralized by antioxidants perform valuable functions in the body. The most important: fighting toxins (white blood cells churn out free radicals by the battalion to fight bacterial infection) and fighting cancer. Maybe it’s not such a fabulous idea to flood the body with something that neutralizes these warriors of the immune system.

The article is worth reading in its entirety, even though it contributes to the sense of vertiginous free-fall these days about health advice and medical research. Consumers of health information have long been familiar with the whiplash effect of sequential contradictory headlines. “Eat no fat or eggs, take lots of vitamins A and E. Oops. Sorry. Never mind.” (Actually, they never say “sorry.”) But now scientists are digging deeper into the research behind medical findings and reporting fundamental flaws.

I’ve quoted this before, but it bears repeating. It’s from an excellent article in The Atlantic by David H. Freedman, author of Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us — and how to know when not to trust them. (emphasis added)

In poring over medical journals, [Dr. John Ioannidis] was struck by how many findings of all types were refuted by later findings. Of course, medical-science “never minds” are hardly secret. And they sometimes make headlines, as when in recent years large studies or growing consensuses of researchers concluded that mammograms, colonoscopies, and PSA tests are far less useful cancer-detection tools than we had been told; or when widely prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were revealed to be no more effective than a placebo for most cases of depression; or when we learned that staying out of the sun entirely can actually increase cancer risks; or when we were told that the advice to drink lots of water during intense exercise was potentially fatal; or when, last April, we were informed that taking fish oil, exercising, and doing puzzles doesn’t really help fend off Alzheimer’s disease, as long claimed. Peer-reviewed studies have come to opposite conclusions on whether using cell phones can cause brain cancer, whether sleeping more than eight hours a night is healthful or dangerous, whether taking aspirin every day is more likely to save your life or cut it short, and whether routine angioplasty works better than pills to unclog heart arteries. …

Doctors may notice that their patients don’t seem to fare as well with certain treatments as the literature would lead them to expect, but the field is appropriately conditioned to subjugate such anecdotal evidence to study findings. Yet much, perhaps even most, of what doctors do has never been formally put to the test in credible studies, given that the need to do so became obvious to the field only in the 1990s, leaving it playing catch-up with a century or more of non-evidence-based medicine, and contributing to Ioannidis’s shockingly high estimate of the degree to which medical knowledge is flawed. That we’re not routinely made seriously ill by this shortfall, he argues, is due largely to the fact that most medical interventions and advice don’t address life-and-death situations, but rather aim to leave us marginally healthier or less unhealthy, so we usually neither gain nor risk all that much.

I highly recommend Freedman’s book.

WebMD a shill for pharmaceutical companies?

That fundamental medical research is highly questionable is a relatively new and disturbing development. What’s as old as advertiser-supported media is the idea that sources of information are biased in ways that may be contrary to our interests. There’s an interesting article in The New York Times, “A Prescription for Fear,” that comes right out and says WebMD is a front for Big Pharma. (emphasis added)

[T]he medical Web … is dominated by an enormous and powerful site whose name — oh, what the hay, it’s WebMD — has become a panicky byword among laysurfers for “hypochondria time suck.” In more whistle-blowing quarters, WebMD is synonymous with Big Pharma Shilling. A February 2010 investigation into WebMD’s relationship with drug maker Eli Lilly by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa confirmed the suspicions of longtime WebMD users. With the site’s (admitted) connections to pharmaceutical and other companies, WebMD has become permeated with pseudomedicine and subtle misinformation.

Because of the way WebMD frames health information commercially, using the meretricious voice of a pharmaceutical rep, I now recommend that anyone except advertising executives whose job entails monitoring product placement actually block WebMD. It’s not only a waste of time, but it’s also a disorder in and of itself — one that preys on the fear and vulnerability of its users to sell them half-truths and, eventually, pills.

The article discusses and recommends MayoClinic.com as a source of health information. For a reliable assessment of the latest medical stories in the news, I recommend a service of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), Behind the Headlines. The site only covers a limited number of stories each weekday. But if there’s a big headline in the news that sounds either too scary or too good to be true, you’ll find a sober, objective, and well-reasoned analysis at this NHS site.

Another reliable site is Gary Schwitzer’s HealthNewsReview.org. Schwitzer is on a mission to raise the level of medical journalism.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I eat dark chocolate every day, but the health benefits are a negligible part of my motivation.)

Resources:

Image: WebMD

Jennifer Warner, Is Chocolate the Next Super Food?, WebMD, February 7, 2011

Sharon Begley, Antioxidants Fall From Grace, Newsweek, January 25, 2011

Virginia Heffernan, A Prescription for Fear, The New York Times, February 4, 2011

David H. Freedman, Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science, The Atlantic, November 2010

David H. Freedman, Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us–and how to know when not to trust them *Scientists, finance wizards, doctors, relationship gurus, celebrity CEOs, … consultants, health officials and more