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---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eating chocolate akin to falling in love ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- LONDON (September 8, 1997 2:21 p.m. EDT) - What is like falling in love, is good for your heart and, contrary to earlier reports, doesn't cause migraines, acne or allergies? The answer: eating chocolate. Far from making you obese and spotty, eating chocolate is good for you was the message that the head of the booming U.S. chocolate industry delivered on Monday to a world cocoa conference in London. A bar of chocolate a day may actually help control that blood cholesterol that can cause heart attacks, said Lawrence Graham, President of the U.S. Chocolate Manufacturers Association (CMA). Graham was revealing the "myth-dispelling" marketing messages that are helping U.S. chocolate sales grow by leaps and bounds despite the dietary concerns of the modern American consumer. U.S. retail chocolate sales have grown 5-6 percent a year for several years, he said. Last year they grew 5.2 percent to a record $11.698 billion, Graham told the International Cocoa Organization which comprises 38 cocoa producing and consuming nations. "This is the highest we've ever been and it continues to go up. So far 1997 also looks like a very good year for chocolate," he said. In contrast, chocolate consumption in most European countries is flat. Success, acording to Graham, is partly due to to a "baby boomlet" that is rapidly increasing the number of chocolate-consuming kiddies in the United States and will soon give the country more teenagers than it has had since the 1960s. But the work of the CMA's American Cocoa Research Institute, whose conclusions are energetically promoted by the industry through the media, schools and health organisations, also plays a big role. "In the health area, we have been working for years in identifying and evaluating issues significant to the cocoa industry," Graham told the conference. These included work on stearic acid, a saturated fat found in cocoa butter that has been perceived as affecting cholesterol levels, and on dental cavities, migraines, caffeine, acne, allergies and obesity. And ACRI's conclusions? On love: "There is some evidence that the chemical reactions in your body when you eat chocolate are similar to what happens when you fall in love," Graham told reporters outside the conference room. On migraines: "Every doctor says if you have migraines, to stop eating chocolate. But there's no scientific evidence that chocolate affects migraine." On acne: "Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy establish that chocolate has no effect on acne." On allergies: "In the United States people think chocolate causes allergies. We've found this is not backed up scientifically." On cholesterol: "Numerous research studies have shown that stearic acid does not raise blood cholesterol when consumed by humans. "In fact, a Pennsylvania State University study, done in 1991-92, showed that a milk chocolate bar per day as part of a reasonable diet actually had a favorable effect on HDL cholesterol," Graham said. The CMA was now lobbying to have stearic acid specially labelled on chocolate products as a non-cholesterol inducing saturated fat, he said. U.S. chocolate consumption is also helped by a trend among consumers away from purely dietary concerns back to tastiness, Graham said. "For many years people consumed diet products, but now they are returning to taste. If you are going to indulge yourself you may as well do it with something tasty. We think this is why chocolate is doing so well," Graham said. By ANDREW TARNOWSKI, Reuters Copyright 1997 Nando.net Copyright 1997 Reuter Information Service <http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/090897/health12_300_noframes.html> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [log in to unmask]