TOI reports ‘Chocolates healthier than most fruits’!!!

I refer to the Times of India dated 8th Feb.

I quote :

Wow! This sounds good! But wait, don’t grab the chocolate bar just yet…

Yikes! They are comparing the cocoa powder with powder made from the poor fruit! And then you claim that cocoa is better than fruit. Now, now, how ridiculous can you get. Next, they are going to claim that cocoa powder is even more valuable than Sachin Tendulkar.. oh! powdered Sachin Tendulkar that is.

A fruit is not some inanimate element with static properties, which would be the same regardless of drying or grounding. It reverberates with life, and in keeping with its biotic nature, goes stale or bad as time goes by. Making a dry powder from it, negates the whole idea of a fresh fruit. It lays waste to its vitamins and anti-oxidants. That’s why processed food is such a sham.

The guys making this claim with a straight face – supposedly ‘scientists’ at the Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition in the US – well the less said about them the better. They join the hall of fame of the economists rooting for lesser regulation for Goldman Sachs, the climatologists arguing why global warming is just a blip, and the doctors arguing why cancer tests proved to be useless are still necessary.

But the journalists reporting this, could we not expect them to be a wee bit more vigilant, or are they too…

Yours truly,

Vivek Shroff (vivekshroff@mac.com)