December means one delicious holiday treat after another. We’re all tempted to indulge. But before you start munching, you might want to know the results of a couple of studies related to those holiday sweets.
First, if you love chocolate, you may already be aware of the virtues of dark chocolate. But an important new study has just confirmed that only dark chocolate is associated with lowering the risk of developing diabetes. This 30-year-long study, conducted at the Harvard Chan School Department of Nutrition, focused on almost 200,000 people who started out free of diabetes. When the study ended, nearly 20,000 had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. A lot of them reported specifically on their dark and milk chocolate intake.
It’s interesting, first of all, that those who ate at least 5 ounces of any kind of chocolate had a 10% lower risk of developing T2 diabetes than people who rarely or never ate chocolate. But significantly, dark chocolate had a much bigger impact than milk chocolate. Participants who ate dark chocolate had a 21% lower risk, with a 3% reduction in risk for every serving of dark chocolate eaten in a week.
At the same time, milk chocolate was NOT associated with reduced risk even though it has a similar level of calories and saturated fat. Why? According to the researchers, it’s the polyphenols in dark chocolate that may offset the effects of fat and sugar.
So before you bite into a mouthwatering chocolate dessert, try to find one made of dark chocolate. I’ve been sampling some new dark chocolate candy bars, and they’re delicious. It’s really no great hardship to switch from milk chocolate to dark.
You might also want to know about new research into one feature of the sweets we love: their frequent dependence on high-fructose corn syrup.
Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have found that dietary fructose promotes the tumor growth of certain cancers in animal models. The finding in this study, published December 4 in the journal Nature, could open up new avenues for care and treatment of many types of cancer.
“The idea that you can tackle cancer with diet is intriguing,” said Gary Patti, a professor of chemistry, genetics, and medicine at the WashU School of Medicine. The culprit seems to be fructose, which is similar to glucose. Both are types of sugar, but the body seems to metabolize them differently. Both are found naturally in fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and grains, and both are added as sweeteners in many processed foods. But the food industry has favored fructose because it’s sweeter.
Consumption of fructose has escalated dramatically since the 1960s, and Patti pointed out that the number of items in your pantry that contain high-fructose corn syrup, the most common form of fructose, is “pretty astonishing.” “Almost everything has it,” he added. This includes foods like pasta sauce, salad dressing, and ketchup. “Unless you actively seek to avoid it, it’s probably part of your diet.”
The problem is that fructose apparently impacts the growth of tumors. I’ll skip the technical stuff, but what’s important is that we should avoid dietary fructose as much as we can. While investigators at WashU Medicine and elsewhere around the world continue to look into possible connections between the surge in fructose consumption and the increasing prevalence of cancers among people under the age of 50, let’s try to avoid this problem.
Here’s my advice: If you plan to indulge in some yummy holiday treats, try to find those made with dark chocolate and those that don’t include high-fructose corn syrup. If you can.
Happy holidays!
susanjustwrites
Susan Just Writes 