A Bigot is for life, not just for Christmas

This Christmas, instead of the traditional platitudes about peace on earth and loving each other, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster used his festive address to attack same sex marriage - again. And a High Court judge joined in.

One thing these two have in common is an interesting use of statistics. I've already written about how equalities are not a numbers game. Either a group of people is equal to others or they are not, regardless of how many of them there are. This is perhaps the most important point to be made when numbers are being brandished as the killer blow in an argument - although it is important to point out where statistics are being abused.

High Court judge Sir Paul Coleridge thinks the government shouldn't be wasting its time: "So much energy and time has been put into this debate for 0.1% of the population, when we have a crisis of family breakdown".

Statistics on the percentage of the population identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual vary but nowhere is a figure this low cited. Not everyone feels comfortable reporting their sexuality, but as a rough indicator of how wrong the judge is, in 2006, the first full year of civil partnerships, there were 231,454 marriages and 16,100 civil partnership between LGB people. That works out as 6.96% as a comparative proportion.

Archbishop Vince Nichols claims that during a "period of listening" held by the government, those who responded were "7-1 against same-sex marriage".

However, the government consultation run earlier this year found that 53% were in favour. This took account of the petitions received as well as 228,000 direct consultation responses, including the huge petition opposing any change from the Coalition for Marriage.

Within the consultation itself, 63% said religious marriage ceremonies should be available to everyone.

I've written before about the consultation and the religious opposition, despite the fact that the government has made it clear that no churches or other places of worship will have to perform gay marriages.

Vince Nichols also tries another tack, claiming that a change in law would not be democratic. He claims that "There was no announcement in any party manifesto, no Green Paper, no statement in the Queen's Speech. And yet here we are on the verge of primary legislation. From a democratic point-of-view, it's a shambles. George Orwell would be proud of that manoeuvre, I think the process is shambolic."

He is basically accusing the government of sneaking legislation through against the wishes of the electorate.

However, on May 3 2010, three days before the general election, the (shadow) equalities minister Theresa May launched the Tory's contract for equalities which included the plan to introduce same sex marriage. The section on civil partnerships states “We will also consider the case for changing the law to allow civil partnerships to be called and classified as marriage.”

If people wanted to vote differently based on this sole issue, they had time to make that decision. Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone has tackled the nonsense of this claim in her blog.

Democratically-elected MPs will be allowed a free vote and the Bill is expected to be introduced in the New Year. As this letter to the Telegraph shows, the MPs and Lords against gay marriage are very much in the minority.

It's not clear what the Archbishop thinks would constitute a democratic process. Legislation by petition? His version of democracy is more akin to a theocracy where a tiny minority made of religious leaders and fundamentalist believers rules the rest of the population. If the government were being truly Orwellian, the law would have been changed without any consultation or vote and history would have been rewritten to remove any trace of the previous status quo. When Nichols says Orwellian, what he means is 'legislation I don't like'. That's the trouble with democracy, you don't always get your own way. On the up side, you do get the freedom of speech to express your Yuletide bigotry.

The Pope used a Christmas address to say that gay marriage will 'destroy the very essence of the human creature'. He doesn't need to use dodgy statistics because he has a direct line to God and is never wrong.



31 December update: Vince Nichols is at it again. He has latched on to this like a ferret and will not let go until his teeth meet.

The mind of a killer

It's traditional to tell horror stories at Christmas. This year, the media have got a real live one.

The media are falling over themselves trying to 'understand' why 20 children were killed at Newtown. Hacks, amateurs and psychologists who should know better are speculating about the motives and mental state of the killer.

We need a reason and we need to know that Adam Lanza was a monster, not 'normal'. Not like us or anyone we know so we can keep the horror at arms' length. All of this speculation is like the stories small children tell themselves when they're scared of the dark. They're comforting.

The monstering of this child-killer who was little more than a child himself is the same as the monstering of child abusers. We need to know they have the mark of Cain on them but now that 'evil' alone is not a reason that many of us accept (or that sells papers), we have to resort to psychology, or what passes for it. (I wrote about the problem with blaming evil here).

The best the media have come up with so far is the fact that he was shy and didn't have a Facebook page. Unless Adam Lanza left a detailed written explanation for his actions, we may never know why he did it, which is something that discomfits the media and a lot of us.

The worst the media have come up with includes details of how he shot his mother in the face, that the school principal should have had a high-power rifle in her office, self-proclaimed 'heart-wrenching' photos, blaming Lanza's 'paranoid gun-crazed mother', confusing his alleged Asperger's with mental illness. And on. And on.

President Obama has said that the dead children were 'called to God', another comforting fiction. America's current principal God was bound to be dragged into it at some point and Obama's narrative is one way of forestalling 'why did God let this happen?', of making sure everyone knows his god is one of the good guys in this story. Except, what kind of bastard god kills children for reasons we mere humans are not privy to as he moves in mysterious ways? Obama didn't mention whether this god of his had also called the six adults who were killed.

The focus on why Lanza did it is also a convenient distraction from how he did it. With guns. Legal guns. For us in the UK, gun laws are not a key issue, so the media focus on the deaths. The fact that one of the dead children was British gives them an excuse they don't need to wallow in their foetid mire.

The list of American school shootings is a very long one. And every killer did it for a different reason or complex set of reasons and circumstances. Even if Lanza's motivation is understood, it won't stop the next one. Does it matter why he did it? Should someone have spotted the signs? There's going to be a lot of 20/20 hindsight, a mixture of accusations against society and individuals or the shrugging off of accusations (by the NRA, for example).

There's also a kind of 'it wouldn't happen here' self-reassurance being promoted by certain parts of the media so we can tuck our children into bed feeling superior to the gun-toting frontier mentality of the colonials.

It's a very human response to feel for the bereaved and to need to know, to understand, but this need can infantilize us, make us content with bedtime stories to ward off the monsters, real or imagined. Meanwhile, the media have given themselves a big fat Christmas present.

The Evil That Men Do

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

At a Scarborough Borough Council meeting, councillor Colin Haddington called for Jimmy Savile's body to be exhumed and removed from the cemetery. Savile’s nephew Guy Marsden said he supports the families of other people buried at Woodlands Cemetery who want the body moved away and would also support plans to dig up and cremate Savile. The gravestone has already been removed but exhumation may not be simple as it's reported the coffin is encased in concrete.

There's a lot more going on than simply removing the body of a man that many people admired and now revile.

There’s a long tradition of removing or mutilating corpses of people who have committed an offence during their lives. It's a symbolic act – sometimes politically symbolic, sometimes morally or culturally.

It’s as if removing Savile will distance him from society, cast him out. He can't be brought to trial, but he is effectively being tried posthumously, his remains have been judged unfit to lie with others. Savile was a practicing Catholic and his removal would be a kind of excommunication from the community of the dead, like the burial of certain categories of people in unconsecrated ground. In this context, burning his body is a symbolic way of wiping him out.

In 897 at the Cadaver Synod, Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of Pope Formosus disinterred and put on trial. He was found guilty and thrown into the Tiber.

When Harold I Harefoot, king of the Anglo-Saxons, died in 1040, his half-brother Harthacanute succeeded him and had his body disentombed, decapitated and thrown into an animal pen or a river, according to different sources.

John Wycliffe was burned as a heretic 45 years after he died in 1384.

Oliver Cromwell was exhumed, hanged for a day at Tyburn, beheaded and the head put at the end of Westminster Hall.

In 1917 Rasputin was exhumed by a mob and set fire to.

Other practices included digging up and mutilating the bodies of people suspected of being vampires to prevent them rising and the use of murderers’ bodies for dissection, denying them a burial.

There are three main reasons for doing this – to punish the dead, to warn the living and to appease the living.

Some Christians believed that that the body had to be buried whole facing east so it could rise facing God on Judgement Day. Burial in unconsecrated ground, dismemberment or other destruction therefore prevented resurrection and condemned the person to Hell.

Posthumous punishment could also be a sort of restitution to the living – anyone who had suffered at the hands of the dead person, a kind of revenge of the powerless. It's also a very good way to make a political point. Desecration of the dead was taken very seriously, so making an example of a corpse could also serve as a warning to the living, to make them fear for their souls, their family reputation or their own honour.

Even though (most of us) no longer believe it's necessary to be buried whole to be resurrected or that a dead person (or at least their soul) can be posthumously punished, even for the non-religious, the thought of their body not being treated in the way they want after their death can be a hard thought to deal with.

In some cases, there is also a sense that the ground may in some way be contaminated by the presence of the body of someone who has done something terrible, as if some essence of them or their crimes remains. It's a human trait that the evolved instinct to avoid or destroy physical sources of contamination becomes symbolic, applied to behaviour or beliefs.

This seems to be the case with Savile, as some families are upset to have their dead relatives buried near him. There is also an implication that the memories of the living will be tainted by the knowledge of who is lying near their dead, that Savile is in some way haunting them. Digging the body up is a kind of exorcising the ghost or staking the vampire.

It will be interesting to see if the contamination stays with the grave and others are reluctant to use it if he is removed.

Separating a rapist or paedophile from society in this way also serves to reassure the living that they and their dead loved ones are good people, untainted, deserving to rest in peace. Savile is not like us. Except that child abusers and rapists are not a separate category of humanity, however much we might like to think they are and try to mark them as Other.

There may also be some kind of expiation of guilt for anyone who should have seen or done something, either in the alleged Savile cases or with other abusers. And society as a whole has failed the victims so society as a whole must be seen to condemn his acts, public opinion now replacing religious censure.

In some cases, this becomes self-righteous outrage, more about being seen to behave in a particular way than achieving anything tangible (like changing laws to protect the vulnerable). This can trigger a kind of mob mentality; although we no longer have physical witch hunts and pitchforks, there is Twitter.

Sometimes there is good evidence, sometimes only rumour and myth. The living can sue for libel, the dead can't - which is why sometimes the truth only comes out after someone is dead and the only recourse is to punish the corpse or the reputation. But sometimes posthumous punishment backfires as the reputation of the punishers is itself destroyed by history.

Savile chose as his own epitaph 'It was good while it lasted'. If the investigations prove the allegations to be true, what will last is the haunting of the living, both the victims and the rest of us in varying degrees. Ritual cleansing by fire or removal or other means may sound primitive or irrational, but sometimes it helps draw a mental line under a life.

11 January update: The police report on the Savile investigation has now been released.

What doctors don't tell you

Warning: May cause apoplexy.

Since 1989 husband and wife team Lynne McTaggart and Bryan Hubbard have been running a website called What Doctors Don't Tell You. Now they are publishing a magazine with the same title.

It wasn't easy finding a copy, which is a mercy. One newsagent in Camden told me he received an unsolicited batch yesterday and sent them straight back because he didn't like the look of them.

Who are McTaggart and Hubbard? She has form as an anti-vaccination campaigner. In one of her books, The Intention Experiment, she says that the universe is connected by a vast quantum energy field and can be influenced by thought. He recommends vitamin C as a treatment for cancer and they complain about the Cancer Act which prevents them promoting their 'cures'. So I think we know what we're dealing with.

There is a bit of common sense here - get some exercise, don't eat junk - but my main issue with WDDTY is that the average reader has no way to tell crap from Christmas and, for some of the articles, nor do I without reading every single research paper they mention to check all the trials and tests were randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, peer-reviewed and had sound methodology and good sample sizes. But I do know when I'm being obviously manipulated. I may not be a rodentologist but I can smell a rat a mile off.

The main message of WDDTY is BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID.

Doctors misdiagnose, make mistakes in prescriptions, constantly break the law by treating patients like 'lumps of meat' and not discussing treatment options properly. If your doctor doesn't kill you, your dentist will by X-raying your teeth. Whipping up fear that a visit to the doctor might kill you is McTaggart and Hubbard's strong suit. Even worse, it might kill your children. This is the trump card as the main audience for magazines like this is women. Around 80% of the pictures of people in WTTDY are of women (I'm not sure about the dogs and the piglet).

There's more. The antidepressants your doctor prescribes you will probably kill you. So will painkillers. Two thirds of people on prescription drugs end up in a worse state because of them. Cancer screening doesn't save lives. Sunblock causes diabetes. Prescription drugs 'are playing a big part in the mental and physical decline of the elderly, and may even be a contributor to premature death'. Note the 'probably' and the 'may even': there's a lot of that in WDDTY.

It's one scare story after another. But there is some good news. Forget about medicine, don't go to the doctor, take supplements. Pretty much every article has a suggestion of a 'proven' alternative to medicine which is either dietary supplements or 'alternative' medicine. Oh, and homeopathy works! This has been proven by a Swiss study that relies on 'real-life' cases rather than academic studies, they say.

There is a long list of superfoods too. Because they're natural. And natural is good. Unlike doctors and prescription medicines, which are unnatural and very very bad.

WDDTY is big on food allergies too. There are lots of stories about various conditions caused by them. Perhaps this is because the magazine is 'supported by some of the world's leading pioneers in nutritional, environmental and alternative medicine'.

Whatever is wrong with you, or whatever you fear you might get in the future, supplements will see you right. It's a bit like psychics who make a prediction then, if you say it hasn't happened, they tell you it soon will.

In the same way that cigarettes are nicotine delivery systems, WDDTY is a supplement advert delivery system.

There is a huge range of unscientific and anti-science propaganda here, all the usual cobblers that a proper scientist could spend weeks demolishing. There are also a couple of articles that are more worrying.

The first is the case study of Nerissa Oden. She says 'I healed myself of severe dysplasia (abnormal cell growth) and HPV (human papillomavirus) in just six months'. How did she do this? 'A friend who is a chiropractor and nutritionist suggested I get tested for hidden food allergies'. Nerissa also went to a naturopath 'who recommended a list of vitamins and supplements that I should start taking'. Nerissa turned down a biopsy and a D&C (dilatation and curettage). After six months on the special diet, she got a good result on a Pap test but then fell off the diet wagon and got a bad result, so she went back on the diet for another six months and upped the supplements.

Bingo. A Pap test came back normal and a gynaecologist declared her cured.

At the end of the article is a handy list of 'helpful supplements'. There's a surprise. It's like a kind of cult. A cult of idiocy.

Why is this worrying? It may cause women to self-diagnose, self-treat or turn down life-saving medical procedures. It will certainly cost them a lot because supplement manufacturers are not charities. It will put readers in the hands of unqualified, unregulated shysters. It may make them take an equally irrational and dangerous approach to other health issues and other areas of life. And if not them, then their children (see, I can play the kiddie card, too).

The second article, the longest one in the magazine, is about HPV vaccines. They are evil. Lynne and Brian don't seem to have read Nerissa's story where she lists all the cancers that HPV can cause and says how serious it is. Nor do they seem to know that the NHS and Cancer Research UK says that it's the second most common cancer in women under 35. In the editorial, they say it's not a serious issue and the article says it's 'uncommon'. But, given how inaccurate and unscientific the rest of the magazine is, why would this article be any different?

The article, by McTaggart, says that cervical cancer is a third world problem, a 'disease of poverty and unhealthy living'. She talks about the huge number of side-effects but lists only the serious, scary ones. The article bombards the reader with statistics and 'facts' and ends by claiming that the vaccination will 'at best' save 40 lives in the UK while harming huge numbers.

She accuses drug companies of using extreme scare tactics to promote the vaccines and make money - which is a bit rich when the magazine is shot through with scare stories to promote supplements and alt med. Incidentally, the supplement market was reported as worth 27 billion dollars in the US in 2009, and growing.

I don't know if the vaccine is safe or not. I don't know if it's as effective as it claims. I don't know how many lives it will save. But I'm much more inclined to listen to the opinions of scientists than quacks peddling what I do know are unproven and potentially dangerous treatments. There's some common sense about the vaccine 'controversy' here.

If this post has given you apoplexy, take a vitamin supplement and you'll be fine. I'm a doctor* and I'm most certainly not telling you to buy this magazine.




*Not a medical doctor. I may start a magazine on all the things that humanities PhD doctors aren't telling you.

Bullies and predators

You may have heard by now that there is a man who comes to Skeptics in the Pub in London who is making women the subject of unwanted sexual attention. That's putting it politely. He's hitting on women, being inappropriately physical/sexual and generally behaving like a dick.


Michael Story has written about this here. Because of the stupid libel laws in this country, the Offender cannot be named publicly, which makes him harder to deal with.


I'm one of the hosts of London SitP, along with Carmen and Sid. When I started going to SitP, very few women came. Sometimes I was the only woman there at the King's Head in Borough. Over the years, we've worked hard to encourage women to come and now a lot do. We want them to feel safe and comfortable. This isn't a major problem, we don't want to blow it out of proportion, but we do want to act responsibly and nip it in the bud.

This shouldn't need saying but apparently it does - this is not acceptable behaviour. There are no excuses. You are not 'just being friendly'. If you were, you'd be doing it to men too. You are not lord of the manor and women are not your personal fiefdom. Your position in the Skeptic community does not give you immunity. Even though the law may protect you, there are other ways we can deal with you - and we will.

I went on the Slutwalk march on Saturday and listened to stories at the rally of women being raped and sexually harassed because men thought they had the right. Although these stories were at the more extreme end of male behaviour, SitP will not tolerate any kind of behaviour that makes women feel uncomfortable because it's all part of the same loathsome mindset.

This kind of sexual predator behaviour is a kind of bullying and, like all bullies, the Offender is relying on silence. I've been bullied in the past; I know how it makes you feel and I know how hard it can be to do anything about it so I know it's a lot to ask you to speak up. But we will sort this out.

Bullies and predators pick their victims carefully. It is not your fault he does this to you. You have not 'led him on', you do not 'deserve' this. He is the one in the wrong. You're not 'making trouble' or 'causing a fuss' by telling us. And anything you do say will be treated in confidence, so you don't need to fear any personal consequences - which is another way bullies maintain their power.

The vast majority of men at SitP would never dream of doing anything like this but the Offender affects them too, making them question their own behaviour and making them wonder what to do if they witness him in action. But guys - man up and speak up.

I've seen comments from some men who are understandably angry and think the answer is for a bunch of guys to tackle the Offender. It isn't. However good your intentions, don't go caveman as this makes women into feeble little victims who can't look after themselves.

We'll deal with this in an adult way and we'll deal with it together. It will get sorted, we promise.

Carmen, Sid and I really strongly encourage you to tell us if you see or suffer from the Offender. We will back you up and anything you tell us will be treated in absolute confidence. You can leave comments here (which in no way implies that you've been directly affected unless you make that explicit), you can email us, DM us on Twitter or tell us face to face. That's @tessakendall, @carmenego or @sidrodrigues.

But DO NOT name him publicly.

If it turns out there is more than one Offender, we'll deal with that too. If you're not in London and you're having a problem, we can still help but we want to put our own house in order.

The Offender is not some mega-nerd who doesn't know what he's doing but if you're a guy who has problems reading signals and body language, a good rule of thumb is - if in doubt, don't do it.

This is Hayley Stevens' commentary on the situation.

Our next meeting at the Monarch is on October 15 and we hope to see lots of you there. We'll also be at Conway Hall on Sunday for more skeptic fun. I may update this to keep up with any developments so check back later.

Pickles' History is Bunk

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles recently said that 'Britain has welcomed people of many other faiths to live among us over the centuries … Indeed, it is the Christian ethos that has made Britain so welcoming'. In the same article, he talks about ‘long-standing British liberties of freedom of religion’.

But a quick look at our history shows that we certainly haven’t always welcomed people of other faiths and our 'liberties of freedom of religion' are not very long-standing at all. In fact, we haven’t even welcomed Christians if they weren’t the right sort. It’s the religious equivalent of Ford’s ‘any colour as long as it’s black’.

This is a far from exhaustive list.

1166
A group of (Christian) Cathar refugees who fled to England were tried by an ecclesiastical court in Oxford presided over by the King. They were found guilty of heresy. They were branded on the forehead, whipped through the streets, stripped to the waist, and sent into the countryside to die of exposure in the snow.

1290
The expulsion of the Jews from England by Edward 1. This was not formally overturned until 1656.

Fourteenth century
Persecution of Catholic heretics, including the Lollards. John Wycliffe was a Lollard who believed that everyone should have access to the Bible and made the first translation from Latin into English.

Fifteenth century
1401 - Henry IV introduced the death penalty for heresy. There was no definition of the offence, so heresy was whatever the Church said it was.

Archbishop Arundel then decreed that no one should translate any part of the Bible into English or read any of Wycliffe’s writings either publicly or privately or be burned at the stake as a heretic. Because Wycliffe had escaped punishment for heresy, he was tried a second time in 1415 (after his death) and this time condemned. His body was disinterred and burned in 1428.

Sixteenth century
Around 1520 the diocese of Lincoln alone was convicting over 100 people a year for the crime of "not thinking catholickly".

The persecution of Catholics under Elizabeth I. The Recusancy Acts punished anyone who did not attend Church of England services, including fines, the confiscation of property and imprisonment. They were repealed in 1650. In the 1560s, Oxford and Cambridge were ‘purged’ of Catholics. Priests were executed.

The persecution of Protestants under Mary I (aka Bloody Mary). Around 300 were burned at the stake and many more were imprisoned.

Seventeenth century
The Corporation Act of 1661 – no one could belong to a town corporation unless they took the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. The Test Act passed in 1673 imposed the same test on holders of civil or military office. This excluded Roman Catholics, Protestant Dissenters/non-conformists and Jews from public office.

The Quaker Act of 1662 – this made it illegal to refuse to take the Oath of Allegiance to the King and country or to hold secret meetings. Quakers believed it was wrong to swear any oath.

The Toleration Act of 1689 - freedom of worship was given to non-conformists, but not to Catholics. These were Protestants who did not conform to the Church of England, for example Baptists, Anabaptists, Methodists, Quakers. However, they were still excluded from political office and from universities. It was not until the Doctrine of the Trinity Act in 1813 that penalties for being a Unitarian were repealed.

John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, was imprisoned for non-conformist preaching.

Nineteenth century
1826 University College London was the first university in England to be established on an entirely secular basis, admitting students regardless of their religion (or lack of it). Before this, education was dependent on belonging to the Church of England.

1829 The Catholic Relief Act followed the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts the previous year. Catholics were finally allowed to hold government and public offices as well as attend universities.

Jewish emancipation was not fully achieved until 1890.

1888 The Oaths Act. Until this point, MPs taking their seat in parliament had to swear an oath on the Bible. After this, they could affirm, so non-believers could finally sit in Parliament.

The lie of 'liberty' and the Christian 'ethos'

Apart from the expulsion of the Jews in the thirteenth century and the denial of Jewish emancipation until the late 19th century, all of this persecution and discrimination was by Christians against other Christians - right up until the nineteenth century. Not exactly long-standing British liberties.

The examples from earlier times show just how discrimination was an integral part of orthodox belief. There never was a golden age of tolerance or liberty.

Moreover, there is no one 'Christian ethos' that has existed throughout our history, it has shifted and changed over the centuries to suit the men in power. The Christian ethos has sanctioned the persecution and expulsion of Jews, the persecution of Catholics, the persecution of Protestants, the persecution of non-conformists.

The men in charge of defining the Christian ethos decide who is in and who is out, hand in glove with the State. Moderate, reasonable believers are not well served by the State's definition and enforcement of this ethos exactly because it is so malleable and open to abuse. Today's ethos includes discriminating against women and LGBT people. Tomorrow's may well have a whole new set of rules on who is and is not acceptable.

Pickles should visit Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland to see just how welcoming and libertarian different types of Christian are to each other. State-endorsed religion does not unite, it divides.

Having an established Church does not guarantee freedoms, it legitimises the orthodoxy of the least tolerant, the least welcoming and the least libertarian. It certainly does not represent the average believer.

The miracle of chocolate?

Stories about the potential health benefits of chocolate surface on a fairly regular basis. Those of us who would happily mainline chocolate may latch on to these stories but, as with most things, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Three stories picked at random:

In the latest news story, a Swedish study published in Neurology has found that chocolate may protect men against strokes. It found that men eating the most chocolate in the study group (63g/2.2oz) were 17% less likely to have a stroke.

In 2011, the BMJ published a study which found that the highest levels of chocolate consumption (more than two bars a week) were associated with a 37% reduction in cardiovascular disease and a 29% reduction in stroke compared with the lowest levels.

This study noted that 'Recent studies (both experimental and observational) have suggested that chocolate consumption has a positive influence on human health, with antioxidant, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, anti-atherogenic, and anti-thrombotic effects as well as influence on insulin sensitivity, vascular endothelial function, and activation of nitric oxide. These beneficial effects have been confirmed in recent reviews and meta-analyses, supporting the positive role of cacao and cocoa products on cardiovascular risk factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, atherosclerosis, and insulin resistance'.

In 2010 an American study found that older women who eat dark chocolate once or twice a week could be lowering their risk of heart failure. The study notes that one or two 19-30 gram servings of dark chocolate a week led to a 32% reduction in heart failure risk. This fell to 26% when one to three servings a month were eaten. But women who ate chocolate every day did not appear to reduce their risk of heart failure at all.

So there does appear to be some health benefit to eating chocolate. However (here comes the bad news), every study says that the fats and sugars in chocolate (even dark chocolate) have potential negative health risks. And every study suggests that it's the flavanoids in chocolate that appear to confer benefit.

Further research will probably show that a cacao-derived pill would confer the benefits and none of the risks. Which is no fun at all.

It's not just chocolate that contains flavanoids, they are also found in all citrus fruits, berries, onions (particularly red onion), parsley, pulses, tea (especially white and green tea) and red wine.

So all the articles that appear to be good news for chocolate eaters could just as well herald onions as potential lifesavers - except that wouldn't make for such good headlines.

It's unlikely that a bag of onions will replace a box of chocolates as the romantic gift of choice for men who forget their partner's birthday or their anniversary and stop off to pick something up on the way home from work. The British Onion Producers Association is not going to start paying for TV adverts modelled on the Milk Tray Man or ones with skinny women eating onions in suggestive ways.

But if you care about your loved one's health, giving them an onion would be a really romantic gesture. Shortly followed by it hitting your head.

A chocolate-covered onion. So wrong.