Give Me More Chocolate — I'm Almost Diabetic

When my wife and I invite friends for dinner, they often show up bearing gifts. The most common gifts are wine and chocolate. I really appreciate these gifts, because they show how much our friends care about our health.

Are wine and chocolate really good for you? It depends on which scientist manages to bamboozle you.

Well, they’re not really trying to deceive you — they just happen to come up with starkly differing conclusions from their research. According to one group of scientists, drinking a glass of wine each day will put you at risk for a host of health problems. According to another group, a glass of wine will improve your blood circulation and let you live longer. This begs the question: how much wine do these scientists believe a person can reasonably drink while conducting scientific experiments?

In general, the health risks associated with drinking alcohol greatly outweigh any benefits, especially since many people are unable to control themselves. Even if drinking a small glass of wine may offer minimal benefits, these benefits quickly disappear if you deplete the liquor store. You are better off drinking a glass of carrot juice, because in the history of the world, there have been only a few cases of carrot juice addiction. And all of them involved rabbits.

Eating chocolate also requires moderation; otherwise you might find yourself attending weekly meetings of Chocoholics Anonymous. Just a few pieces each day are enough to derive any health benefits. One of these benefits, according to a new study from Harvard University, is diabetes prevention. The study, published in The BMJ, suggests that consuming dark chocolate may reduce your risk of getting Type 2 diabetes by 21 percent.

This is good news for me. Diabetes runs in my family and I’ve been diagnosed as prediabetic, so I’m hoping that the next time I see my doctor, she prescribes a heavy dose of chocolate for me.

Unfortunately I prefer the wrong kind of chocolate: milk chocolate.

“Our findings suggest that not all chocolate is created equal,” said the Havard study’s lead author Binkai Liu. “For anyone who loves chocolate, this is a reminder that making small choices, like choosing dark chocolate over milk chocolate, can make a positive difference to their health.”

Photo by Tetiana Bykovets on Unsplash

To conduct their study, the researchers looked at health data collected over 30-plus years from 192,000 adult participants. They found that people who consumed at least five servings of dark chocolate per week showed a 21% lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. People who consumed milk chocolate did not get the same benefit. Instead, they showed a 21% higher risk of breaking a scale. (Weight gain was connected to increased consumption of milk chocolate, but not dark chocolate.)

“We were surprised by the clear split between dark and milk chocolate’s impact on diabetes risk and long-term weight management,” said the study’s co-author Qi Sun. “Even though dark and milk chocolate have similar levels of calories and saturated fat, it appears that the rich polyphenols in dark chocolate might offset the effects of saturated fat and sugar on weight gain and diabetes.” (Rich polyphenols, not surprisingly, tend to reside in upscale chocolate, segregating themselves from poor polyphenols.)

One limitation of the study is that the participants were mostly white, so the results may not apply to all races. Indeed, if white people benefit from eating dark chocolate, perhaps dark people can benefit from eating white chocolate. (Now you know why I’m not a scientist.)

It’s worth noting that previous studies have shown a correlation (not causation) between eating dark chocolate and a reduced risk for cardiovascular disease. Chocolate consumption has also been linked to lower blood pressure and improved blood cholesterol.

So if you happen to be coming to my house for dinner, feel free to bring chocolate, and don’t mind me if I have it as my main course.