We hear a lot of bad news, but there is some GOOD news too: scientists have found a cure for baldness AND they’ve discovered that chocolate may be more effective than fluoride in fighting cavities.

Researcher Arman Sadeghpour has discovered that an extract of cocoa powder that occurs naturally in chocolates, teas, and other products might be an effective natural alternative to fluoride in toothpaste. This will be the first major innovation to commercial toothpaste since manufacturers began adding fluoride to toothpaste in 1914.
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You may think that describes YOU, if you find yourself craving that delicious serotonin-raising substance. Most of us are slaves to chocolate, but what it REALLY describes is the child labor used to pick cocoa beans in West Africa.

In the Independent, Humphrey Hawksley describes conditions on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, where?despite a pledge by chocolate companies 5 years ago?indentured children are still the most common form of labor. They are virtual slaves. Hawksley quotes one child as saying, “I used to go to school, but my father has no one to work on the farm, so he took me out of school. My mother’s a long way from here. I haven’t seen her for 10 years?since I was two years old.”
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In baseball dugouts, we see players swigging special sports drinks that are designed to replace the salt lost in sweat, but if they listened to the results of a new study, they would be drinking chocolate milk instead!

Eddie Pells reports in LiveScience.com that a small group of fit athletes worked out on a stationery bicycle, then drink low-fat chocolate milk, a fluid-replacement drink like Gatorade and a carbohydrate replacement drink like Endurox R4. A few hours later, they rode their bikes again, this time until they were exhausted.
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Scientists just can’t leave well enough alone. They’ve produced GM corn and inedible tomatoes, but now they’ve gone too far?they?ve re-engineered chocolate.

Would we want to eat chocolate that didn’t melt? Even though it was discovered in what is now Mexico and most of it is grown in the tropics, chocolate isn’t eaten much in hot climates because it’s too messy.
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