Statistical analyses
pain
Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 28 (SPSS Inc. Chicago, IL, USA). To test the normality of the data, the Shapiro-Wilk’s test was used. Mean and standard deviation (SD) were used for descriptive statistics when data was normally distributed, while median and interquartile range (IQR) were used for non-normally distributed data. Moreover, when data was normally distributed, parametric statistical methods were used, while non-parametric statistics were used for data that was not normally distributed.The Kruskall-Wallis one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) on ranks was used to test if there were any differences regarding background factors among the groups and different chocolate types.The Shapiro-Wilk’s test indicated that data regarding pain intensity and PPT were normally distributed. Based on this, two-way repeated measures (RM) ANOVA was used to analyze differences over time, with chocolate type as the independent factor and time as the repeated factor. When the RM ANOVA indicated that there was a significant time difference, the Tukey test, for multiple comparison versus a control group (baseline), was used as a post-hoc test, as well as to test differences between chocolate types and interactions at different time points. Before statistical analysis of pain intensity and PPT, the values were normalized to baseline. Thus, the pre- and post-chocolate difference, i.e. the relative changes (%) were used in the statistical analyses.Data regarding peak pain intensity, pain duration, and pain area from pain drawings were not normally distributed, not even after log transformation. Therefore, these data were analyzed using non-parametric methods. The Friedman RM ANOVA on ranks was used to test for differences between chocolate types. When a significant difference was indicated, the Dunn’s method for multiple comparisons versus a control group (baseline) was used as a post-hoc test. Since there were three different types of chocolate this was repeated three times, thus a Bonferroni correction was used resulting in a significance level of The significance level was set to 