Candy maker's a sugar daddy for UCD cocoa health studies
Sacramento Bee 2/19/07
As researchers outlined the latest word on cocoa at a major scientific conference in San Francisco on Sunday, the sticky fingerprints of one of the world's largest candy makers were everywhere. And, the imprint of UC Davis was not far behind.
Mars Inc. has spent 18 years on a cocoa crusade, hoping to create healthier foods from an ingredient that today exists in only trace amounts in its most popular candy bar.
Along the way, Mars has enlisted the University of California, Davis, as a key ally, funding studies by at least 20 investigators and creating a chair in the nutrition department. University records show Mars has spent more than $10 million backing cocoa-related research at Davis since 1997.
UC Davis and Harvard probably stand as the two major U.S. partners in Mars' efforts to understand cocoa, said Ian Macdonald, a professor at the University of Nottingham Medical School who serves on the Mars Nutrition Research Council.
Like all but one of the presenters at Sunday's "Neurobiology of Chocolate" panel, Macdonald has been funded, at least in part, by Mars.
The panel's co-organizer, Harold Schmitz, is both Mars Inc.'s chief science officer and a visiting professor at UC Davis. Another presenter, Hagen Schroeter, was hired away from Davis to work for Mars last year but remains an adjunct professor.
Mars believes that one day it will learn how to capitalize on a taste people love to deliver major health benefits, said Schmitz. Time will prove, he added, that Mars has been interested only in solid, peer-reviewed research that will both help people and drive profits.
It also saves taxpayers' money, said Carl Keen, chairman of UC Davis' nutrition department. Keen has published dozens of papers on cocoa, many funded by Mars. "If I have a choice between a company paying for something or my tax dollars paying for it, I'd prefer the company pay," he said.
Two years ago, Mars endowed a chair in child nutrition for Keen, giving him access to "no strings attached" money to investigate whatever he wants, according to Schmitz.
Keen wants to investigate cocoa flavanols. He believes the compounds are so potent for human health that we could one day see suggested minimum guidelines for their consumption.
But with obesity soaring, the focus on cocoa reflects "a strangely misplaced sense of priorities," said Merrill Goozner, director of the integrity in science project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
"This is the nutrition department, for crying out loud. I think taxpayers would be pretty upset with that," he said.
Goozner worries that cocoa studies, like other company-backed research, are subtly skewed by self-interest.
Businesses study questions that could benefit their bottom lines. They neglect topics that could hurt profits. And company-backed scientists, when they write up their data, often cast the best possible light on results.
Goozner was among the authors of a study, published online last month in PLoS Medicine, which found that beverage studies funded by industry were four to eight times likelier than other beverage research to reach conclusions serving their sponsors' financial interests.
When the subject is chocolate, the appetite for good news is enormous. At Sunday's cocoa panel at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, listeners filled chairs, sat on floors and stood against walls as researchers highlighted one cocoa delight after another.
They touched lightly on the caveats that most chocolate enjoyed by Americans has a fairly low flavanol content and carries huge loads of calories and sugar.
Instead, there was news from a Salk Institute scientist that mice fed a flavanol compound remembered their way through a water maze better than other mice. Their brains showed enhanced blood supply in the hippocampus, a key area for memory, and certain nerve cells were thicker.
Dr. Norman Hollenberg, a professor at Harvard Medical School, said that in areas of Panama where the Kuna Indians drink massive amounts of a bitter homemade cocoa, diabetes and cancer deaths are startlingly low. The soon-to-be published work, based on census data, follows Hollenberg's earlier findings of lifelong low blood pressure and reduced cardiovascular diseases among cocoa-drinking Kuna.
The older news about cocoa, explored by many researchers including UC Davis' Keen, is that its flavanols seem to keep artery walls more flexible, improving platelet flow and reducing malfunctions that can lead to heart disease and stroke. The flavanols are part of a larger family of flavanoids in fruits and beverages, including wine, beer, tea, apple peels, blueberries and grapes.
In newer research that moved beyond cardiovascular effects to cognition, Macdonald on Sunday outlined the way flavanols boosted blood flow to certain parts of the brain when young women took tests. He acknowledged, though, that their test performance was the same with or without the special research cocoa drink supplied by Mars.
And Schroeter talked of tantalizing possibilities that caffeine and a related chemical, theobromine, might team up in cocoa to enhance cognition, reaction time and energy levels.
Mars is trying to tap the health-cocoa market, with "CocoaVia" bars and drinks that promise a minimum amount of flavanols, and company officials and researchers predict that other products will emerge.
Despite cocoa's potential, people should eat only moderate amounts of chocolate, ideally just once a week or so, according to Macdonald, who also studies obesity and diabetes.
For "moderate," figure the equivalent of half a Snickers, which is Mars' best-selling bar.