Chocolate can be good for women's hearts, say researchers

Study of women aged 48-83 finds moderate consumption of chocolate with high-cocoa content lowered heart failure risk

One or two 19g-30g servings of dark chocolate a week led to a 32% reduction in risk of heart failure, says the study. Photograph: Howard Shooter/Getty Images

An occasional chocolate treat can help prevent heart failure in older women, research suggests.

One or two servings of good-quality chocolate a week reduced the risk of middle-aged and elderly women developing the condition by almost a third, a study found.

Scientists studied almost 32,000 Swedish women aged 48 to 83.

Moderate chocolate consumption significantly reduced heart failure risk, but the protective effect lessened as more or less was eaten.

One or two 19g to 30g servings a week led to a 32% risk reduction. This fell to 26% when one to three servings a month were eaten, while one serving a day or more showed no benefit.

A typical chocolate bar weighs around 100 grams, but the amount of healthy cocoa solids it contains varies greatly.

Dark chocolate can contain as much as 75% cocoa while standard milk chocolate may have 20% or less.

Antioxidant plant compounds called flavonoids in cocoa are believed to protect against heart disease and high blood pressure.

The study authors pointed out that chocolate eaten in Sweden tends to have a high cocoa content.

Although 90% of chocolate consumed in the country is milk chocolate, it consists of around 30% cocoa solids.

The lack of benefit from eating chocolate every day was probably due to the extra number of calories consumed, said the researchers.

This in turn could lead to increased weight and higher blood pressure, which is a risk factor for heart failure.

"You can't ignore that chocolate is a relatively calorie-dense food and large amounts of habitual consumption is going to raise your risks for weight gain.

"But if you're going to have a treat, dark chocolate is probably a good choice, as long as it's in moderation, " said study leader Dr Murray Mittleman, of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, US.

China overtakes Japan as world's second-largest economy

A production line worker at a Shanghai factory.

China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest economy during the second quarter of this year, marking another milestone in the country's transformation from impoverished communist state to economic superpower.

With its red-hot economy growing at around 9% a year, some experts now expect China to outstrip the United States as soon as 2030, its financial strength carrying broad political implications.

Official data published today showed a faltering Japanese economy growing by just 0.1% in the three months to June, with GDP of $1.28tn (£826bn) eclipsed by China, which had economic output of $1.33tn.Although it is not the first time China has outpaced Japan in a single quarter, most economists now expect the emergent economy to end the year firmly ahead.

China's spectacular growth since Deng Xiaoping began to introduce free-market reforms three decades ago has seen it bounding up the world league of economic powers. Just 10 years ago, it was the sixth-largest in the world but has since outstripped Britain and France in 2005 and Germany in 2007. It overtook Germany as the world's largest exporter last year and also became the largest car market.

John Hawksworth, chief economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, described the figures as a "symbolic" shift. He said: "Clearly it was inevitable, it was a just a question of when it would happen – just as it is pretty inevitable in the long run that it will be bigger than the US as well, because it has four times the population."

For now, China remains a distant second behind the US. The International Monetary Fund expects China's GDP to reach $5.36tn this year, while the US is expected to hit $14.79tn. The UK projection is $2.22tn. Japan is expected to have GDP of $5.27tn.

Nick Parsons, head of research at National Australia Bank, said the global financial crisis, which pitched more developed economies into recession, has underlined the shifting world power. "The Chinese economy has more than doubled in size in the past 10 years and will double in size again in the next 10 and I don't think the financial crisis has accelerated that change as much as it has cemented it," he added.

For Japan, the figures reflect the continued decline of a nation that has held the second spot since 1968, when it overtook West Germany, the result of a remarkable rise as a manufacturing and financial giant in the wake of the second world war.

But the "economic miracle" came to a juddering halt at the beginning of the 1990s when a property bubble burst. What followed was a lost decade in the doldrums and the country has never fully recovered. Today, it faces deflation, an ageing and shrinking population and only minimal growth.

Economists also cited the figures as evidence that the global recovery was still facing strong headwinds.

China's breakneck growth has not come without cost, causing huge social upheaval, including large-scale migration from the countryside to cities, which are growing at an unprecedented rate. Consultancy firm McKinsey reckons that China's urban population will almost double by 2025, when it will have 221 cities with populations of more than 1 million, compared with 35 in Europe. China has continued growing through the recession, in part owing to a $586bn stimulus package.

The headline growth figures also mask huge disparities of income in China, which has a population of 1.3 billion; the UN estimates that 300 million have been lifted from poverty since the reforms began, but while luxury boutiques spring up in Shanghai and Beijing, hundreds of millions still live in severe hardship, particularly in rural areas. Japan's people are still among the richest in the world, with GDP per capita of $39,700, compared with $46,400 in the US and just $3,600 in China.

The rapid advances in China have also led to environmental problems: in 2006, the country overtook the US as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. This month, Beijing ordered more than 2,000 highly polluting, unsafe or energy inefficient plants to shut down within two months, underlining how the one-party regime can direct sudden change.

The growth of China has made it hungry for natural resources and energy, driving up the cost of commodities and raising the potential for conflict. It has been busy doing trade deals in Africa, Latin America and Asia, without the kind of human rights and reform demands often attached by the west. The US has already blocked an attempted takeover of an American oil firm by a Chinese state-controlled rival while Australia has prevented the Chinese buying mineral firms.

There are also concerns that the global economy has become unbalanced, with huge trade deficits between China and the developed world. China is said to make four-fifths of the world's toys and almost three-fifths of its clothing. Developed economies are hopeful that China will become a market for their goods and services as its consumer market grows, but at present it accounts for just 2% of UK exports. Critics in the US and Europe argue that China is benefiting unfairly because it keeps its currency, the yuan, artificially low, benefiting its exporters.

According to a different measure, using purchasing power instead of current exchange rates, China had already overtaken Japan.

Hawksworth said China's growth will begin to slow progressively to around 3.5% to 4% in 20 years' time. This is in part because of an ageing population, due to its one-child policy, as well as increasing pressures on wages and a growing reliance on domestic demand as exports slow. There have recently been a series of high-profile strikes at Honda and other factories in southern China, as workers demand better wages and conditions, while a series of suicides at Foxconn, which makes iPhones and other Apple products, has raised concern and led to higher pay.

But Hawksworth said the increasing political power that has come with China's economic growth was already apparent: "It is evident in a whole series of forums from Copenhagen and climate talks to the G20, that you can't really come to a sensible solution without giving considerable weight to China."

We're doomed if most women want a Male Boss

The Observer Features Sun 15 Aug 2010

Women bosses are being trashed by men and, more worryingly, other women

What does it take these days to inspire women to self-hate? Not only to self-hate, but to take it to such industrial levels that they are manufacturing their own misogyny?

Last week, it took a study by www.ukjobs.net, which interviewed 3,000 men and women, finding that three-quarters of men preferred to work for male bosses; two-thirds of women agreed. Their reasons were that men were more straight talking and reasonable, less bitchy, cliquey and prone to mood swings, and (this one made me laugh) less likely to feel threatened if others were good at their jobs. Yeah, that's what I've noticed about men too – they're so non-competitive.

Another reason didn't make me laugh, in the same way that Roy "Chubby" Brown doesn't make me laugh. This said the reason male bosses were better was "no time of the month". So here we have it: "Is it your time of the month, darlin'?" That cliche is churned out whenever a woman is annoyed or upset. It's the staple, woman-slamming riposte of 70s sitcoms, usually followed by a gale of canned laughter. Here it was, immortalised in 2010 workplace lore as a bona fide "reason" why male bosses are better. More depressing, presumably at least some women in the survey were happy to go along with it.

Perhaps I should feel cheated that no woman I ever worked for suddenly started bawling about men troubles, bitch-slapping colleagues or involving me in the intimate workings of their menstrual cycle. For the record, here are some of my experiences of working for women. They asked me to do something, I did it, they said thanks. A little later, they asked me to do something else, I did it, they said thanks. And so on. A bit monotonous, isn't it? Or should I say professional, uncomplicated, normal, enjoyable? In fact, strangely similar to the vast majority of my experiences with male bosses.

This is the point. The boss thing is not a gender issue – it is a personality issue or, if you really want to get brutal, an "arsehole" issue. Some people can cope with having power over others; others, be they male or female, should never have been given it. If gender comes into it at all, it is as an afterthought, a preference, the sprinkle of hundreds and thousands on your working-life ice cream sundae. Some people prefer their own sex because of the gender shorthand and intimacy it sometimes brings; others prefer the opposite sex precisely because of a presumed sense of difference and distance. None of this matters more than this question: this boss of yours, is he or she a complete arsehole or not?

What's depressing about this survey is that the catalogue of "reasons" why women do not make such good bosses is effectively a list of why anyone, male or female, would be bad at wielding power. Yet somehow these are defined and presented as "female" traits. So it is that before they've even reached their desks, and fished out a ballpoint, women bosses are being branded, trashed, dreaded and judged by men and, more worryingly, other women.

This goes beyond this survey. If any women comes out with "no time of the month" as a reason for preferring a male boss, not only should they be ashamed, but they should be aware where this self-hatred leads. Are you telling me that these kinds of attitudes do not subliminally leak into everyday work culture, leading to more pressure on female bosses, less likelihood of females becoming bosses, less respect for female workers across the board? Is this the working world that two-thirds of women really want? Let's hope not.

While we're all aware of the glass ceiling, it becomes a whole new issue if it is other women calling in the glaziers.

Face it, Becks, you are too old

So precisely how indignant should we feel on behalf of David Beckham and his brutal "too old" dumping by England manager, Fabio Capello during a press conference? Well, a little, but that's your lot.

Capello's crime was one of manners. Before making any public statement, he should have personally called Beckham and said: "Sorry, you're out, and it has nothing to do with the fact that you got right on my nerves, hanging around like a spare part in the dug-out during the World Cup."

Capello was right. After South Africa, I felt that I could play for England, but, joking apart, no player, including Beckham, has a preordained right to be in the squad. Remember the uproar when Glenn Hoddle left Paul Gascoigne out of the 1998 England squad? Then, come the matches, and it was all "Ooh, Michael Owen" and everyone forgot about "indispensable" Gazza.

As for the age jibe, again Capello is right. Beckham may be one smoking-hot papa on billboards selling underpants, but he is 35. Footballers, like other professional sports people, have a notoriously short shelf life. At their peak, they exploit this very fact to get huge wages – their argument being: "I only have a limited amount of time to make money out of this, so pay up."

Fair enough (fill those studded boots), but then they can't act all surprised and hurt when their much trumpeted limited shelf life turns out to be a reality.

Beckham can continue to play the martyr, refusing to play a "goodbye" friendly and insisting, chin jutting, misty-eyed, that he is still available to play for England. The heart is with him, but the head is not. Capello lacked manners and sensitivity, but he was also right.

Fewer of those diva demands, please, Mr Blair

No photographs. No mobile phones. No personal dedications. Tony Blair's demands for his book signings for A Journey are reminiscent of the contracts of diva film stars, where crew members and other mere mortals are not allowed to talk to them or even look them in the eye. Tony Blair is ready for his close up, Mr Waterstone.

He should be aware that the public is bored with self-justifying New Labour memoirs, which are never as good as our own Andrew Rawnsley's take, though I shall be dipping into Blair's work to get the latest on Cherie's "contraceptive equipment". Knowledge is power, people.

Who'd bother queuing to talk to Blair or get their picture taken with him, anyway? Some of us would happily pay the book price to be assured of avoiding these traumatic experiences. What's the betting that Blair's signing will be full of yawning people in anoraks intending to resell signed books on eBay, or, like those crowds of children you get at zoos, gathered around cages, to watch the angry monkey.