Corporate Research transparency

I have a new found respect for Mars, Inc (the chocolate company).  I was listening to an interview with Hagen Schroeter, the director of fundamental health and nutrition research, at Mars.  About 20 minutes of the interview covered the now famous anti-oxidants in chocolate.  This has led to a major increase in sales of chocolate.

Hagen's research discovered that this is BS (sorry to all you chocolate fans that have been using this as an excuse to eat more).  The processing of chocolate destroys most of the flavonoids and  flavonols.  And the digestion and metabolism of the chocolate destroys the rest.  So test tube studies find anti-oxidants, but in vitro blood tests find zippo make it through.

Some of Hagen's research focuses on new ways to process the chocolate so more of it gets through.

What makes me respect Mars is that the interview asked Hagen if Mars discourages him from publishing the results.  After all, this could really kill all of those extra sales they are getting from the rationalizations of chocolate loving dieters. 

But his response was just the opposite.  He said that Mars encourages him to publish it.  One self-serving (for Mars) hope is that independent scientists will read the research and do their own studies on new processing methods that maintain anti-oxidant levels. 

But he insisted that it is more of a fundamental openness of their research policy.  I can't attest as to whether this is true or not, but the fact that he was disclosing in a publicly available interview that the anti-oxidant meme is BS was some pretty good evidence.