Chocoholic metabotype

Some people may think this sounds like the latest album from that youtube guy who sang chocolate rain, but this is real science I'm talking about here -- hehe -- Anyway, the Boston Globe describes a study was recently published in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Proteome Research (is that really the name of the journal?). Of all places, the study was conducted by Sunil Kochhar at the Nestle Research Center in Switzerland.

Kochhar and colleagues enlisted 22 men of approximately the same age and weight - 11 claimed to be "chocolate lovers," and 11 said they were indifferent to chocolate. The subjects were all put on the same diet for five days, and all ate chocolate or bread for the duration of the study. Researchers found that the "chocolate lovers" had lower LDL-cholesterol and higher albumin levels in their urine and blood, even on days when they didn't consume chocolate.

Let me get this straight. So, when asked to take part in a study at the chocolate research center and asked if you enjoy eating chocolate, they then give you either chocolate or bread? I'm no researcher, but if I'm not receiving chocolate and getting bread - I pretty much know that I'm in the placebo group. Research bias?

What this study concluded was that if you have the favorable metabolic type (metabotype) for chocolate, then basically you can eat as much chocolate as you want and it will not affect your LDL (bad) cholesterol. Finally! A study which justifies the amount of chocolate I consume.

Close to the bottom of the article, it says that the research was limited by the fact that only males were used. The next step was doing the same study using female subjects. Any takers?