The Hershey Company wants you to know that eating their chocolate products while on a weight loss program will not derail your slim goals. The chocolate corporation put together a study to help chocoholics rationalize eating a few pieces of the company’s delectably sweet, processed foods everyday.
The Hershey, Pennsylvania-based company chose some of their obese and overweight female employees and put them on a weight loss plan. Researchers observed that the women lost an average of 11 pounds over a four month period. Considering that chocolate is a highly addictive substance, especially when processed sugar is added, Hershey scientists concluded that depriving addicted people only hampered their weight loss regimen.
“Women think about going on a diet and think they have to deprive themselves of their favorite foods, but really that’s not the case if you incorporate them in a portion-controlled way,” said Kathryn Piehowski, who conducted the research while at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.
There are many flaws to a study conducted by a corporation, whose first priority is to sell consumers their product. For example, there was no control group, which means one can substitute Hershey’s chocolate for any comparably portioned snack. Furthermore, weight loss is observable with almost any food as long there is calorie restriction and exercise involved in a weight loss plan.
According to outside researcher quoted on Reuters Health, one shouldn’t get too excited about this study because there is undoubtedly healthier options that help dull one’s appetite or tendency to overeat:
“Chocolate…is a highly-desired food,” said Debra Keast, from Food & Nutrition Database Research, Inc in Okemos, Michigan. But, she added, “I really don’t think that it would be as effective as some other type of snack” for weight loss.
Either way, the details of this chocolate-laced diet are to die for:
Half of them were also given small dark chocolate snacks to eat twice a day (totaling 90 calories each day) and sugar-free cocoa for breakfast. The other women ate fruit-flavored licorice snacks and had a sugar-free non-cocoa drink in the morning.
Twenty-six women completed the study, 13 in each group. After just over four months, women in both groups had lost an average of 11 pounds.