Friday, October 12, 2007

More innovation

American this time(to be fair and balanced):

WASHINGTON (AP) -- If that craving for chocolate sometimes feels like it is coming from deep in your gut, that's because maybe it is.

A small study links the type of bacteria living in people's digestive system to a desire for chocolate. Everyone has a vast community of microbes in their guts. But people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate's allure.

That may be the case for other foods, too. The idea could eventually lead to treating some types of obesity by changing the composition of the trillions of bacteria occupying the intestines and stomach, said Sunil Kochhar, co-author of the study. It appears Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Proteome Research.

This is a very smart concept for solving any sort of eating disorder. We're just beginning to fully understand the basis for all of the live bacteria in our systems and how it works for good or bad. The clincher on this one though... It was funded by Nestle. Though they do claim it isn't to sell more chocolate:

Kochhar is in charge of metabolism research at the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne, Switzerland. The food conglomerate Nestle SA paid for the study. But this isn't part of an effort to convert a few to the dark side (or even milk) side of cocoa, Kocchar said.

In fact, the study was delayed because it took a year for the researchers to find 11 men who don't eat chocolate.

The rest of the study is pretty interesting, but you can read it at the link.

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