Pills containing dark chocolate nutrients are being launched through a big study to figure out if they will help prevent heart attacks and strokes, the Associated Press reported.
The study, which will enroll 18,000 men and women worldwide, has 'nutrient' pills being tested that would amount to eating a gazillion candy bars.
"People eat chocolate because they enjoy it," not because they think it's good for them. The idea of the study is to analyze whether chocolate's ingredients, without the sugar and fat, can prove to be beneficial for health, said Dr. JoAnn Manson, preventive medicine chief at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
The study will be sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and Mars Inc., maker of M&M's and Snickers bars.
According to the AP, the study will be the first large test of cocoa flavanols, which in previous smaller studies improved blood pressure, cholesterol, the body's use of insulin, artery health and other heart-related factors.
Multivitamins will be tested in the second part of the study to see whether they can help prevent cancer.
Although earlier research suggested this benefit of multivitamins, it only involved older, unusually healthy men. Researchers want to see if multivitamins lower cancer risk in a broader population.
"The candy company has patented a way to extract flavanols from cocoa in high concentration and put them in capsules," the AP reported. "Mars and some other companies sell cocoa extract capsules, but with less active ingredient than those that will be tested in the study; candy contains even less."
"You're not going to get these protective flavanols in most of the candy on the market. Cocoa flavanols are often destroyed by the processing," said Manson, who will lead the study with Howard Sesso at Brigham and others at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
For four years, participants will get dummy pills or two capsules a day of cocoa flavanols. During the study, neither the contestants nor the study leaders will know who is taking what during the study.
The flavanol capsules are coated and have no taste, said Manson, who tried them herself, according to the AP.
In the other part of the study, participants will get dummy pills or daily multivitamins containing a broad range of nutrients.
"Participants will be recruited from existing studies, which saves money and lets the study proceed much more quickly, Manson said, although some additional people with a strong interest in the research may be allowed to enroll," the AP reported.
Women's Health Initiative study, the long-running research project best known for showing that menopause hormone pills might raise heart risks rather than lower them as had long been thought, will volunteer their women. Other large studies will be used to recruit the men.
With results expected in three years, Mason is also leading a government-funded study testing vitamin D pills in 26,000 men and women, the AP reported.
People love vitamin supplements but "it's important not to jump on the bandwagon" and take pills before they are rigorously tested, she warned.
"More is not necessarily better," and research has shown surprising harm from some nutrients that once looked promising, she said.
