Dark chocolate is now a health food. Here’s how that happened.

The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of scientific studies to show cocoa is good for you... how in the world could a chocolate bar be convincingly sold as a health food? You can thank a decades-long effort by the chocolate industry.

Over the past 30 years, food companies like Nestlé, Mars, Barry Callebaut, and Hershey’s — among the world’s biggest producers of chocolate — have poured millions of dollars into scientific studies and research grants that support cocoa science.