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Chocolate as Wonder Food

Mars is marketing its new CocoaVia brand of chocolate bars as heart-healthy. And they seem to have science on their side.

They're even looking at using their research on the benefits of cocoa to jointly produce with a pharmaceutical company prescription products.

The fact that Mars is sponsoring scientific studies in this area isn't new, nor should it necessarily invalidate the results. It's more in the interpretation of the results and the marketing of their products that Mars has to tread carefully.

Mars claims their new line of chocolate bars delivers "real heart-health benefits," notes the Washington Post:

"(The ingredients are) formulated to promote a healthy heart. … CocoaVia is the only product that contains a patented blend of heart-healthy cocoa flavanols and cholesterol-lowering plant sterols from soy. The new line of snacks also is fortified with calcium and a mix of heart-healthy nutrients including folic acid, vitamins B-6, B-12, C and E."

Balance that against warnings from dietitians not to take this as carte blanche to eat as much chocolate as you want.

Still think this is just a granola marketing gimmick? Research suggests that cocoa could be the base for a cheap, effective treatment for diarrhea, one of the leading causes of child deaths in developing countries.

Previous post:  Functional Food: Do Less Harm to Yourself

Tags: functionalfood  chocolate  health  mars  pharmaceutical

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PR Briefs - News Items Feb. 27, 2006

"True Spin": An Oxymoron or a Lofty Goal?

Diane Farsetta on the True Spin PR conference for progressive organizations.

Dogcaught: A Railroad Blog

For railroad fans, Aaron Hockley's blog features rail cars and other photos from the Pacific Northwest.

PR Students ask "How Come They Don't Teach Us Any of This?"

Josh Hallett on PR bloggers speaking to university students.

Let's Get Together in Toronto

Bogging conference being planned for Toronto in May 2006.

Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle

Elmore Leonard provides advice on how to write a book. Thanks to Dave Traynor for the link..

Workers working harder, getting less done

Dave Traynor riffs on a Wired News report that workers feel less productive, despite all our time-saving technologies.

Liberals and blogging: Open Thread

Canadian blogger opens discussion about why Liberal (Party) bloggers haven't been as effective as convservative bloggers.

Blogging's Greatest Mystery

Kate McMillan continues the discussion about why conservative bloggers had more impact in the Canadian election than liberal/left bloggers.

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Hire Me! Job Search Networking , the Online Version

  Will Pate 
  Originally uploaded by kk+.

Vancouver web development sales guy Will Pate is using his network of friends, associates and pathological geeks to help him look for a new challenge.

Pate has been making good things happen for Raincity Studios, but wants to try something else.

Technorati's community manager Niall Kennedy is also using his blog to help his job search.

Some of the posts, recommending Pate:

Darren Barefoot, Tris Hussey and others.

Canada at the Olympics

   
  Originally uploaded by kk+.

Okay, our fans may still be hosers, but the athletes in Turin have to be some of the least egomaniacal bunch of athletes I've seen in a long time.

Photographer Kris Krug is in Turin as part of a group of Vancouver businesses learning and sharing in advance of the 2010 Olympics.

Tags: kriskrug olympics photos vancouver

Boing Boing Tracking Down Canadian "Lawyer"

Cory Doctorow is hot on the trail of someone using a Rogers e-mail address, who is purporting to be a Canadian lawyer. The writer's inability to spell "lawyer", "Queen's Counsel" and "libel" was the first tip-off that "Don Deveny" might not be a real lawyer.

After checking with various provincial law societies, Doctorow found no such lawyer registered, and is turning up the heat with research into the person who owns the e-mail account that was used.

I'm dying to see how this story ends.

Lesson: You're not as anonymous as you think you are.

Trivia:  Queen's Counsel is a designation granted by a law society, denoting that someone is a senior lawyer with an excellent reputation. It doesn't come with any extra powers, and has been superseded in some provinces.

Tag: boingboing impersonation bogus blogs lawyers

PR Briefs - News Items Feb. 20, 2006

Reviewing the CBC

Fine Young Journalist warns that it's very difficult to tell if a journalism is succeeding. So when the government conducts a review of the CBC, the minister involved better figure out what the CBC is supposed to be for, and how you can tell it's achieving its goals.

Journalism is not my profession!

Kari Johnston plans to spend four months on a home made raft on the Yukon River this summer, and pitched the idea to CBC Radio's Outfront.

Larry Summers - Makings Of A Greek Tragedy

Jane Genova further examines why Harvard president Larry Summers isn't able to change his behaviour in order to succeed.

Larry Summers - Another Smartest Kid In The Class In The Soup

Jane Genova on the Harvard president's inability to use intelligence to stay out of trouble, and her own brush with trouble when brains weren't enough.

Greatest Presidential Speeches of all Time

Scott Baradell points out his top two choices for best U.S. presidents' speeches.

Funding journalism

Mark Hamilton on Tyee Corp's innovative approach to encouraging independent journalism, with cash.

Your Call Is Important to Us

Scott Baradell agrees with Seth Godin that accepting "accountability" is becoming more common. Why not just apologize, and mean it? he asks.

Dumb Marketing Decision by NBC; We Suspect Lawyers Were Involved

Scott Baradell on the need to take risks in business, and lawyers' aversion to risk. He cites NBC's legal victory, forcing YouTube to remove a Narnia video from its site, thus reducing the exposure NArnia gets. Dumb move.

Crisis PR: All that glisters is not gold...*

Tom Murphy on the role of blogs and dark sites in crisis communications.

The Art of Creating a Community

Guy Kawasaki provides tips on ceating a community, revised as suggestions come in from his community (readers).

Sucking Up

David Parmet disagrees with Guy Kawasaki's suggestion that sucking up to bloggers gets results. A good pitch should be brief and to the point.

The tipping point

Ike Pigott compares the new public relations environment to a basketball game, and notes that trying to manage your image can be like defending against a full-court press.

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IABC Launches Blog "Community for Business Communicators"

The redesign of the International Association of Business Communicators' web site was just part of the the group's web revitalization. This weekend they launched IABC Communications Commons, a group of blogs authored by various IABC members and aimed at elevating the discussion about business communications.

I'll park my skepticism about the extent to which the blogs will be authored by multiple authors. The IABC Cafe blog got excellent uptake during the last international conference, but after that chair Warren Bickford was left swinging in the breeze by all but one of his guest bloggers.

The active involvement of Communication World editor Natasha Spring is a good sign. An effort like this needs the hand of some paid writers, editors and association people, to supplement whatever blog posts are offered up by volunteers (members).

The idea of having several blogs on topics that interest and affect IABC members is promising. The fact the discussions will take place in public will possibly limit participation by some of the more timid members, but hopefully IABC finds more than enough authors and readers to create a meeting place for the exchange of ideas and experiences.

If you visit the site in the next day or two, don't be put off by the fact long-time IABC member and leader Shel Holtz seems to be a one-person blogging machine there.  He created an introductory post for each of the content areas, and for the home page. But that's pretty standard when you're building the template. Once others have stepped up with their blog posts, we'll be able to evaluate The Commons and how well it's living up to its potential.

I've already subscribed to the blog feed, and am hoping the site is showing signs of healthy debate by the time my membership gets renewed later this month.

Offended? Create Your own List of Banned Words

The Iranians are renaming Danish Pastries "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad," to protest the Danish editorial cartoons.

This sort of thing can escalate.  Next thing you know, Canada will rename Brazil Nuts: "Rain Forest Nuts" in condemnation of Brazil's stewardship of the Amazon  basin.

Then Chinese Food will instead be referred to as Oppressed People's Food and Kiwi Fruit will be called, well, Hairy Fruit, because that's what it should have been named in the first place.

China, of course, has a long history of human rights violations.  New Zealand is just caught in the crossfire, because there isn't a type of food named after Australia, which has a degrading refugee process.

Personally, I've been offended by a few things written by New York blogger BL Ochman, so I'm going to remove those letters when they appear at the beginning of a word. As a protest against BL's frequent mistreatment of the human language, in future I will write and speak thusly:

"On a **eak winter morning, I pulled on my **ue jeans, ate some **intzes and **ood sausage, then sat down to post to my **og."

And don't get me started on the verbal gymnastics that will be required to form sentences while avoiding words that might imply I condone the fashion atrocities of Courtney Love, the bully tactics of Apple Inc., the human rights abuses of George Bush, and the offensive actions of hundreds of other public figures, cities, countries and neighbourhoods.

Communication will become increasingly difficult as I add new words to my banned list, but at least my act of publicly condemning immorality in this world will accomplish something (not sure what yet, but I'll report back when I figure it out).

My campaign of protest may seem intolerant and futile at first, but since when has that been an impediment to anyone?

Thanks to Allan Jenkins for the Danish response to pastry situation, and Bill Doskoch for an update on the cartoon backlash.  And BL, I wasn't really all that offended, but the conceit of being offended was too good to pass up. ;-)

Tags:  banned cartoons danish humour blogs protest

Randy Bachman - Host with the Most

Dave Traynor has it right.  He points to Randy Bachman's Saturday night show on CBC Radio One as "arguably the best music show in the land."

Bachman hosts Randy's Vinyl Tap, which uses his personal perspective as the lens through which he views a musical theme, event or time period.  If you haven't tuned in, make a point of listening Saturday nights 7 to 9 p.m.

Of course, Bachman isn't best known as a professional radio host.  He was the creative driving force behind Bachman Turner Overdrive, and (with Burton Cummings) The Guess Who.

PR Blogs - Who's on First?

Constantin Basturea has updated the timeline of first postings by PR bloggers, first started by Phil Gomes.  (First started in two ways - Phil had the first blog, and Phil first created the list).

PR Blog Timeline

Best posting on this topic was by David Parmet, who created a fake posting back-dated to 1969, to lay claim to the first PR blog (tongue in cheek).

Constantin also offers his congratulations to those of us who recently celebrated a first anniversary, and to Giovanni Rodriguez (see news release), Steve Rubel and Jeremy Pepper for their recent career moves.

Congrats all.