Chocolate Health Food

Mars Inc. is planning the nationwide launch next month of a new product line made with a dark chocolate that the company claims has health benefits. Mars, who makes Snickers and Milky Way, will launch a product called CoccaVia. CoccaVia is made with a kind of dark chocolate high in flavanols, an antioxidant found in cocoa beans thought to have a blood-thinning effect similar to aspirin and may even lower blood pressure. The snacks also are made with vitamins and injected with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols from soy.

Researchers are skeptical about using chocolate for its medicinal purposes, and experts warn it's no substitute for a healthful diet. The party poopers from the Center for Science in the Public Interest have come out with a statment saying how dangerous it is to promote chocolate as healthy. Remember, these are the same spoil sports who tried to ruin movie popcorn for people everywhere.

I think the whole fuss was summed up best by The Wellness Letter out of UC Berkely. The evaluated CoccaVia, and told readers to enjoy the chocolate, but did not endorse it as health food. CocoaVia was just an expensive candy bar, concluded John Swartzberg, chairman of the newsletter's editorial board and clinical professor of health and medical science at Berkeley.

"But it did taste good," he said.