What’s healthier? Eating a “heart smart” chocolate bar packed with antioxidant flavanols or not eating a chocolate bar at all? Mars, maker of M&Ms and Snickers, is promoting their new ‘healthy’ branding experiment CocoaVia, suggesting that the consumption of two portions of the dark, hippie chocolate will help to reduce bad cholesterol.

This would be great, were it not for the fact that it’s still a chocolate bar, something many afflicted by high cholesterol do not need any more than they need self-tanning Cheetos. Especially when the magic chemicals this chocolate contains are “similar to those flavanols found in red wine and green tea.” Yes, the same calorie-free green tea you can purchase for about three dollars per box of 100 at any corner store.

The Consumerist loves chocolate, for we are all too human. But just like we don’t pretend to be preventing Alzheimer’s when we slam back a six-pack of caffeine-laden Coca-Cola, we don’t see a need to make crass dark chocolate bars by pretending that eating them twice a day is anything more than a basic, gluttonous right.

An Apple a Day for Health? Mars Recommends Two Bars of Chocolate [NYTimes]

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