The Chocolate Study – Not Quite The China Study

In January 2015 Johannes Bohannon and colleagues conducted a study on the effect of cocoa on weight loss. The study was published in the International Archives of Medicine. The authors concluded that high cocoa content chocolate is an ideal “weight loss turbo” if used in combination with a low-carb intervention for weight loss.

The news spread fast from England, to Germany, to the US and beyond. Shape magazine, in their June 2015 issue went so far as to specify the appropriate cocoa content for weight-loss-inducing chocolate (81 percent) and even mentioned two specific brands.

Millions of chocolate lovers probably rejoiced at the thought that chocolate might help them shed pounds. Such a reaction would have been premature as it is NEVER a good idea to put too much weight into the results of one study, especially a nutrition study that provides surprising results. This particular study happened to be an example of very bad science and its quick promotion through mainstream media is an example of the media’s desire to provide good news about bad habits.

I didn’t have to dive very deeply into this study to determine that its results should never have seen the light of day. You see, its lead author, Johannes Bohannon, is actually John Bohannon, a science journalist whose real experiment was to find out how easily the results of a bogus study could reach millions of people through various media outlets.   He found out that it didn’t take too long.

If you’d like to learn the details on how he perpetrated his hoax, you can read this article he wrote for a web site called io9.com.

Garth Davis MD, lead author of Proteinaholic, reminds us that “One paper cannot prove or disprove anything”. He uses individual studies as data points within a complex algorithm for making medical recommendations to his patients. He doesn’t ignore the current preponderance of evidence regardless of whether the new study refutes or supports it. He encourages us to “be suspicious of outlier data and demand replication of the finding in larger, well-designed studies.”.