Globalisation:European Food Information Council: Controversies surrounding EUFIC people

Josephine Wills

Josephine Wills was involved in a controversy surrounding her employers Mars, a subsidiary of Masterfoods in 2002 when the company suggested that eating chocolate may have health benefits. The company can claim to take a 1/4 share of the £3.5bn generated by sales of chocolate in the UK. Over the past decade, Mars has been pouring money into research in some of the world's leading universities to try to prove that cocoa beans, the source of pure chocolate, contain enough of the right kind of a class of chemicals called flavonoids to help human hearts stay healthy. Yet the chocolate products Mars markets in Britain and elsewhere contain small proportions of cocoa beans and high proportions of the fats and sugars which, in excess, can lead to obesity - an underlying cause of heart disease. Mars' flagship bar, the Mars bar, contains only a small covering of chocolate and contains mainly sugar. When Dr Wills was questioned over the apparent attempt by Mars to start marketing their chocolate products as health foods, she said "We are not trying to position chocolates as health products. They're not designed that way, they're not marketed that way, but I think if you take chocolate in moderation you're not going to do any harm to yourselves. They're actually doing some good because they're contributing flavonoids shown to have this potential cardiological health benefit." However, Mars has been feeding the media stories about the beneficial qualities of chocolate, using a combination of respectable scientific events and PR companies to nudge journalists towards them. For instance, Mars employed a PR company, Grayling Healthcare, to issue a press release about an American Heart Association event. The release was headlined "Media Alert: News for Chocolate Lovers This Christmas". .