From the WaPo:
Mars Inc. said yesterday it is holding "serious discussions with large pharmaceutical companies" about the development of a line of cocoa-based prescription drugs that could help treat diabetes, some forms of dementia and other ailments.
The McLean candy and food conglomerate for more than a decade has pursued research on the possible health benefits of cocoa flavanols, compounds contained in one of the basic ingredients of chocolate.
As about 20 Mars-funded researchers gathered in Lucerne, Switzerland, to discuss their latest findings, the company announced that it foresees a possible line of pharmaceuticals growing out of the work and that it was being pursued by drug companies interested in the medical applications of cocoa.
Chocolate as a treatment for diabetes? Are you kidding me? Is that a little like advocating folks eat buckets of extra crispy KFC to combat heart disease?
Whether M&Ms have more in common with aspirin than their shape remains a matter of dispute. Some nutrition experts dismiss out of hand Mars's claim that the flavanols found in cocoa are as beneficial as the company contends.
"This is about selling chocolate. Mars is only doing this because it wants people to eat more and more M&Ms," said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition, food studies and public health, , who dismissed the idea of cocoa-based medicines. She has no relation to the European chocolate maker of the same name.
That the WaPo found a nutrition professor by the name of Nestle is too rich!
But it gets better...
Eager to boost its good-for-you bona fides, Mars earlier this month named Catherine E. Woteki, a former undersecretary of food safety in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as its director of scientific affairs.
So now there's a two-way street of government—corporate sugar-kisses? I thought that Pharma had the market cornered on buying government officials.
Pass the bon bons.
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