It's good for you -- really! Chocolate lovers would like any excuse to indulge their cravings, and now chocolate makers claim they can with good conscience. Mars, maker of Milky Way, Snickers and M&Ms, is touting a new line of products called CocoaVia. Made with a dark chocolate high in flavanols (antioxidants found in cocoa beans), which might have a blood-thinning effect similar to aspirin, the vitamin-enriched snacks are also injected with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols from soy.
But researchers warn that using chocolate for "medicinal purposes" might mislead folks in a country where obesity is a leading cause of health problems and say fruits, vegetables and whole grains contain more of the healthy flavanols.
Hey, my grandfather always kept a jar of "vitamin M" for the grandkids, and we loved digging into that trove of M&Ms he said were good for us. If he were around, he'd go right along with this marketing ploy, just as he would maintain that his morning glass of whiskey was good for his heart.
