Musings of a Compulsive Thinker

Osteoporotic candy bars

Human trabecular bone is the spongy-looking type of bone found inside the dense outer layers of cortical bone. (For a more complete explanation, go here.) Osteoporosis is a condition in which bone loses some of its density; this change is especially prominent in the trabecular bone. I read about a study by some Welsh medical professionals in which they compared Crunchie (top right) and Aero (bottom right) candy bars to normal and osteoporotic human trabecular bone, respectively.

No, really.

At first I was a little surprised that it was actually published, let alone that these people actually conducted and wrote up this study. When I took the time to actually read the paper, however, I came to admire the practicality.

The basic idea here is that when medical professionals discuss bone health with patients, particularly when explaining the risks involved with osteoporosis (most notable of which is increased fracture risk), it helps to have a visual aid. Apparently the authors of this study noticed that Crunchie and Aero bars were a popular teaching tool, and so they decided to test the validity of this comparison.

I won't go into the technical details here, but their test methods were surprisingly thorough. What they found, in the end, is that the mechanical properties of the candy bars don't really compare all that well to actual bone. However, for the purposes of providing a simple visual aid for describing bone structure, these candy bars are fine examples.

Read: P. Jones, S. Jones, D. Stone: Accuracy of comparing bone quality to chocolate bars for patient information purposes: observational study. British Medical Journal 2007, 335:1285-1287.

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Labels: engineering, food, science

posted by the alygator @ 2:56 PM