Chocolate causes depression?

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"You can prove anything you want with statistics!"

How true... especially when it comes to the Aztec ambrosia - chocolate.

In today's BBC news comes the revelation that chocolate lovers 'are more depressive', according to experts. Similarly...
29 Jul 2009: Calls to downsize chocolate bars
24 Dec 2007: Dark chocolate 'not so healthy'

But then again, taking a "Relevant stories" link trail finds a veritable tsunami of more positive stories regarding most people's definition of "food of the gods":

30 Mar 2010: Chocolate 'can cut blood pressure and help heart
28 Apr 2008: Chocolate 'may cut diabetes risk'
13 Sep 2007: Chocolate cravings come out of the box
03 Jul 2007: Chocolate 'lowers' blood pressure
16 Apr 2007: Chocolate 'better than kissing'
11 Mar 2007: Cocoa nutrient for 'lethal ills'
15 Nov 2006: Chocolate 'cuts blood clot risk'
10 Apr 2006: Chocolate trial on heart patients
20 Dec 2005: Chocolate may cut heart disease
22 Mar 2005: Chocolate 'has health benefits'
01 Jun 2004: Chocolate 'helps blood vessels'
06 Apr 2004: Chocolate 'makes for happy babies'
27 Aug 2003: Dark chocolate may be healthier
05 Dec 2002: Chocolate 'could cure coughs'
03 Sep 2001: Chocolate's double-edged health message:
29 Aug 2000: Chocolate 'keeps heart healthy'
24 Aug 2000: Chocolate 'fights' tooth decay

Meanwhile, anyone detect a theme, or even repetition, in these articles?

19 Feb 2000: Chocolate is good for you
06 Aug 1999: Chocolate 'is good for you'
21 Dec 1998: Chocolate is good for you - official
18 Nov 1998: Official: a little of what you fancy does you good

-oOo-

And in other "Dodgy Science" news, the Daily Wail has hit upon a rather surprising (for it) secret to a happy marriage...

And the New Scientist has found elephants are scared of bees (!) and even make alarm calls to other pachyderms in the area...

Comments

It's possible

Zoe Taylor's picture

It's possible that they were just sugar-loading themselves, too. Too much of any sweet is going to have an inevitable crash that can feel like depression.

The article doesn't say whether they even accounted for other variables, which is unfortunately a growing trend in both "liberal" and "conservative" media. Leave out the facts of the study and just report the findings and commentary.

You said it best yourself; you really can prove anything with statistics. It reminds me of the statistic that "90% of crossdressers are heterosexual." I often wonder how many of that 90% are in fact TS lesbians in denial. But I digress ^_~

Disclaimer: I am not, nor would I ever pretend to be, an expert in medicine, mood, or nutrition, but I am a lifelong chocoholic, so I'm probably biased in defense of the sugary goodness. ;-)


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You had to mention the ch word!

Now I'm going to have to go and find myself some. I just hope I don't find too much, or I'll pig out...

Hmmm. Should I be suspicious that you've suddenly managed to find all these references to chocolate, or is it worse? Are you such an obsessive about the stuff that you actively search the interwebs all the time looking for references to keep in a great big list? ^_-

Penny

I know it is a NSFW link

But Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics TVTropes entry contains dosens of relevant examples of how statistics can be used to lie. Just for a couple of them:

•Newspapers love doing this with drug related stories. It's almost impossible to see Ecstasy mentioned in a British newspaper without the qualifier "That killer drug", the supporting statistic is of course that a dozen people die per year from consuming it. Yet over the course of a year they will rack up an impressive body count in stories about fatal car accidents without ever devolving into calling cars "Those murderous rampaging kill bots" How many Britons drive? How many take E?
â—¦A related strategy was used by US president Richard Nixon to portray marijuana as a gateway drug. His anti-drug team estimated that 80% of marijuana users go on to use cocaine, a figure which they obtained by taking the number of cocaine users and dividing it by the number of those users who had started by using marijuana. This ignored the fact that out of all marijuana users, only about one in 2,400 go on to use cocaine. And related to that, most people willing to take a drug as dangerous as cocaine are willing to take a drug as relatively safe as marijuana. It's the same reason most marijuana smokers have drunk alcohol at some point, and why most alcohol drinkers have drunk something with caffeine in it. Water: the Gateway Chemical

And similarily, there are just as many examples that can be made by replacing the actual cause with a fictional one, like I once heard about a survey:

Consuming vitamins leads to a shorter life span

That one failed to put into account that it's sickly and unhealthy people that tend to consume vitamins, and they have shorter life span from that and not from vitamin consumption.

Faraway


On rights of free advertisement:
Big Closet Top Shelf

Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!

Faraway


On rights of free advertisement:
Big Closet Top Shelf

Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!

How to lie with statistics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_statistics

'Nuff said. A good illustration of "Correlation does not imply causation" is this:

The more health food shops there are in a town, the more crimes will be committed. Therefore, health food shops cause crime.

Of course, what this fails to take into account is the size of the town - as generally, larger towns (with more people in, and therefore more criminals in) will have more health food shops (and, indeed, every other type of shop!) than smaller towns.

 


There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

Wait a Minute...

Six one-ounce chocolate bars a month is at the HIGH end of the scale?

Six bars a week, maybe...

Eric

No doubt

Aljan Darkmoon's picture

"You can prove anything you want with statistics!"

Dodgy indeed, because there is much more to science than numbers (such as how one goes about collecting them).

How true... especially when it comes to the Aztec ambrosia - chocolate.

And even more especially in the practice of identity politics, which has for decades relied on dodgy statistics to support their propaganda.