For all you chocolate lovers out there a paper that finally has the findings you would like to hear, consuming chocolate (albeit of the dark kind) can help you lose weight as part of a low carb diet.
The researchers took a group of people aged between 19-67 and split them into 3 groups: the first two groups had a low carb diet with one of the groups also consuming a daily serving of 41 grams of chocolate with 81% cocoa solids. The third group were told to eat at their discretion.
They found that those that consumed the chocolate found it easiest and were most successful at losing weight compared to the other two groups. They also reported that this group a significant improvement in their well being, both mentally and physically.
Sound too good to be true? I am afraid it is. It was all part of a con by the lead author to see if he could get a paper published with questionable results and statistics. Now that the true motivation behind the paper has been released to the press the journal has removed the paper from its website and claimed that it was never truly published anyway.
Still, the health benefits of dark chocolate have been touted before, such as the antioxidant level, but suggesting eating it would cause you to lose more weight than someone eating the same diet minus the chocolate was abit far fetched. Personally I am a great believer in everything in moderation.
If you would still like to check out the paper, it was still available from a cached Google page as this blog was published.