An easy question
The Herald (quoting the Daily Mail) asks “Is chocolate the new Viagra?“.
No, it isn’t.
The actual facts are that a chocolate company has submitted an application to be able to say “Cocoa flavanols help maintain endothelium-dependent vasodilation, which contributes to normal blood flow”. We’ve already covered the research that supports this application, back in March.
Maintaining “endothelium-dependent vasodilation, which contributes to normal blood flow” is not what Viagra is best known for, and the evidence on whether it also has this effect seems to be mixed. Even if it does, that wouldn’t imply chocolate had Viagra’s other effects.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »