外刊阅读20241215｜黑巧克力还有这好处？

+

上期划线句答案

+

本期内容

◆

双语阅读

If you’ve long assumed that you must deprive yourself of delicious foods in order to be healthy, a new study published today in The BMJ offers encouraging news: Eating dark chocolate has been associated with a reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

The research did not prove that the chocolate itself was responsible for this health benefit; it could be something else about the people who ate dark chocolate that made them less likely to develop diabetes. And dark chocolate should not be considered a “ magic bullet ” for preventing diabetes, said Dr. Qi Sun, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the lead investigator on the study. But the findings do build on a larger body of research demonstrating links between dark chocolate consumption and reduced risks of certain health conditions like high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and insulin resistance.

While the study was large and well-designed, it could not prove cause and effect, said Dr. Susan Spratt, a professor of medicine in the division of endocrinology , metabolism and nutrition at the Duke University School of Medicine, who was not involved with the study. Perhaps the people who consumed dark chocolate were healthier in other ways, she said. Maybe they exercised more, followed a healthier diet or could more easily visit a doctor when they needed to, for example.

The study group was also mostly white and well-educated, so the results may not apply to everyone, Dr. Sun and his coauthors noted. The researchers accounted for many factors related to diet, lifestyle, education and wealth in their analysis, Dr. Sun said. But proving that eating dark chocolate prevented Type 2 diabetes would require a clinical trial on a large group of people, giving half dark chocolate and the other half milk chocolate, and following them for decades.

Cocoa is a bean extract that is rich in fiber and beneficial plant-based compounds called flavonoids , said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and the director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, who was not involved with the study. Some research suggests that flavonoids have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects and might help to open blood vessels, which may explain cocoa’s health benefits, he said.