Chocolate Medicine

[Tinman57]

The Therapeutic Uses of Medical Chocolate, Our Favorite Food

  The concept of medical chocolate may seem an odd one to some people, but true chocolate lovers won't be surprised to learn that our ambrosia does, in fact, have some therapeutic uses beyond its ability to soothe the savage beast. Or at least, its major ingredient does. Stick around, and we'll explain what we mean.

http://www.extremechocolate.com/the-therapeutic-uses-of-our-favorite-food.html

[Renegade]

I've heard about and read about the benefits of chocolate for years. However, the information coming out more recently seems to be better. The problem is that people will think that it's "healthy" to eat another Mars bar or something similarly idiotic. It's relatively limited and you need to choose the right chocolate. e.g. Apples are healthy, but chopping up 1 apple with 1 kg of sugar and a pound of butter probably isn't going to be all that wonderful.

[tomos]

it may also be useful in cancer prevention. At least one current patent covers this potential use.

Sorry for veering off-topic, but: can simply a use of something natural, ['potential' or not], be patented? Of course, in fairness, it could be much more complicated than just take-three-times-a-day...

[Renegade]

it may also be useful in cancer prevention. At least one current patent covers this potential use.

Sorry for veering off-topic, but: can simply a use of something natural, ['potential' or not], be patented? Of course, in fairness, it could be much more complicated than just take-three-times-a-day...

Well, kind of. Aspirin is a bastardized and patented version of a natural substance. They basically just find what works, create a bastard mutant, then patent and market that. I never changes. Patents create an incentive to create shittier versions of what already exists.

[Edvard]

Although there's something to be said for convenience.  When I get a headache, I'm none too keen on finding the closest local willow tree, and go about scraping and brewing enough bark to gain relief. 
But yes, most patented medicines have biological roots for their inspiration.  The patent lies in the extraction, isolation, manufacture and 'tweaking the dose'. 

[Renegade]

The patent lies in the extraction, isolation, manufacture and 'tweaking the dose'. 

That's not quite true. What you've described isn't patentable. You can't patent orange juice. However, if you alter the chemical composition of orange juice, you may be able to patent that. Simply creating extracts isn't "non-obvious" or "innovative". e.g. Taking something that works, then creating some random bastardization of it that still kind of works isn't innovative, but it's non-obvious, because most people aren't twisted or demented enough to realize the genius of creating an inferior product is actually an innovation and very profitable.