Well I’ve heard everything now. Chocolate – you know, the devil incarnate in terms of blood sugar, weight gain and indeed dental health (plus others, I dare say) – is not only good for your heart (those studies, I’m afraid, are as common as muck these days). But eating it is apparently as good for your fitness levels as exercise too.
WHAT? Am I hearing this correctly?
But wait. Why then, I’m wondering, am I not the female equivalent of Usain Bolt? Hell, I eat enough chocolate (despite being sensitive to caffeine – which means I have to do all my chocolate eating early on in the day or I don’t get a wink of sleep afterwards) to be an Olympic athlete.
Oh hang on a minute. The tests – which suggest a compound in dark chocolate called epicatechin stimulates the muscles in a similar way to intensive exercise – were performed on… wait for it… mice.
Talk about that sinking feeling. I really wish they wouldn’t do that. Get people all excited and then, when you get to the small print, you discover the miraculous effect of whatever you’ve been reading about has been tested on a small laboratory creature, that is. Don’t get me started on animal cruelty either, though these particular mice were fed chocolate, so perhaps I shouldn’t get on my high horse on this occasion.
As countless others have pointed out before me, results of tests that are done on animals can not necessary be replicated in humans. So when I see a study like this one, I just want to spit!
There again, if they’re looking for human volunteers to test the same theory…