Suspect Mars Experiments

viggi-tea

Hello all Veggie/Vegans!

I just wanted to stick up this slightly worrying piece of information I received in a PETA email. Apparently the Mars Company (owner of M&Ms, Skittles, Starburst etc) are involved in some sort of animal testing on mice in order to determine the effects of chocolate ingredients in their blood vessels.
The PETA site with information about it is here (be warned its pretty horrific reading):

http://www.marscandykills.com/index.asp

It sounds bizarre to me. Surely theres very little research for chocolate ingredients that still needs to be conducted? I'd also be concerned about what is going into their chocolate if they feel the need to conduct tests like these to check them out.

Whats going on???

Peanut

There is good evidence that in at least some cases, chocolate can have a beneficial effect on health, in relation to blood pressure and other effects.

Mars would like to be able to make claims about this on their product, and/or develop products that claim to have more of the 'active' ingredients. (edit, think they have already done this in the States at least)

More details here (also the links on the top-right). (Incidentally, I don't agree with the idea that only dark chocolate has these effects, I would imagine reasonable quality milk chocolate has the same constituents, just in smaller %s per square).

Actually they reckon that even the dark chocolate we eat doesn't have any of these beneifical properties because the flavanols are removed because of their bitter taste.
If you've ever eaten 99.9% cocoa chocolate it tastes like coal.

Peanut

I think it's more of a problem with the crappier stuff really.. the amount removed depends on the processing.

Some bitterness is a component taste in good chocolate, even milk varieties.

Yeah I've tried 99% lindt chocolate, it's pretty hardcore

Tar.Aldarion

Not too nice all right, the 83% is good.

sweet-rasmus

ugh!!! why is this necessary?!!! *sigh*

eth0_

Usual PETA bullsh*t, no references for their claims, the video on the site is disturbing but bears no relation to the testing they claim MARS do.

I am an animal lover and testing makes me sick, but PETA do more harm than good.

Did you know, if PETA had their way, people would be banned from having pets? They think it's cruel.

PETA have been proven to have rooms dedicated to euthanising animals that they have 'rescued' because they don't want to re-home them as pets. Is that how an animal lover behaves?

Nature Boy

Yeah there's a few dodgy stories going around about them. They seem to have gotten so obsessive and gone over the top

Serpentine

eth0_ wrote: »

Usual PETA bullsh*t, no references for their claims, the video on the site is disturbing but bears no relation to the testing they claim MARS do.

I am an animal lover and testing makes me sick, but PETA do more harm than good.

Did you know, if PETA had their way, people would be banned from having pets? They think it's cruel.

PETA have been proven to have rooms dedicated to euthanising animals that they have 'rescued' because they don't want to re-home them as pets. Is that how an animal lover behaves?

I only found out about the euthanasia last year & was naturally horrified. I try to distance myself from PETA as much as possible, I know their original intentions were admirable but now I find them suspect. Local animal shelters are much more dependent on our support